of hundreds of thousands of casualties from 1914 to 1918. McCarthy was the only head of a department in the BEF who remained in her original post throughout the war, although she was off-duty with appendicitis from March–August 1917. She was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1918, received a Bar to her Royal Red Cross and was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal, the Belgian Medaille de la Reine Elisabeth, and the French Légion d'honneur and Medaille des Epidémies. When she left France on 5 August 1919, representatives from the French government and the medical services saw her off. The meticulous records kept since her arrival in France were taken to England with her. Describing the matron-in-chief during the war, one general said:'"She's perfectly splendid, she's wonderful ... she's a soldier! ... If she was made Quartermaster-General, she'd work it, she'd run the whole Army, and she'd never get flustered, never make a mistake. The woman's a genius." Mary Salmon, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1914, referred to her as a "slight, delicately-organised woman" with "an absolutely wonderful gift for concentrated work, and a power of organisation that has made her invaluable in army hospital work". She was matron-in-chief of the Territorial Army Nursing Service from 1920 until her retirement in 1925. Personal life McCarthy never married, and died at her home at Chelsea, London on 1 April 1949, aged 89. A pastel portrait of her by Austin Spare hangs in the Imperial War Museum. In 2014 she was honoured by having a blue plaque placed on her Chelsea former home. References J. Piggott. Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps (London, 1975) Profile at Navy History website 1859 births 1949 deaths Australian nurses British women in World War I Dames Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire Female nurses in World War I Members of the Royal Red Cross Nurses from London People from Sydney Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom Australian women of World War I Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps officers British Army personnel of World War I Australian women nurses Florence Nightingale Medal recipients