Margaret Irene Lang

Margaret Irene Lang, (23 May 1893 – 14 February 1983) was an Australian military nurse who became the matron-in-chief of the Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service.

Early life Lang was born on 23 May 1893 in Oxley, Victoria, to Annie ( Martin) and John Douglas Lang, who was a miner. She was educated at Creswick Grammar School and began her nursing training at Wangaratta Hospital in 1912.

Nursing career By the time Lang had trained as a nurse, Australia was involved in the First World War. By 1917 she had become a matron but she left the hospital in Stawell to join the Australian Army Nursing Service, Australian Imperial Force briefly in Suez before she joined 300 of her peers on Salonika. In 1919 she was in London where she had four months studying domestic science at the South-Western Polytechnic. She left the military at the beginning of 1920 with the rank of sister. By December 1940 the service had 45 members, but this increased to over six hundred by December 1945. All members held commissioned rank, and wore RAAF badges of rank along with the RAAF medical badge on their tunic lapels and capes, but did not use Air Force rank titles.

Following the end of the war, Lang was discharged from the RAAF and returned to Victoria Police Hospital in 1946. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1950, and died in Canterbury, Melbourne, on 14 February 1983.