Evelyn Carroway

Female

Birth date: 2.12.1893 y.

Cabin: Nurses-32

Biography:

Evelyn “Evie” Carroway

VAD Nurse, HMHS Britannic
Age: 22 | From: Bath, England

Evelyn Carroway was never meant for war. The youngest child of a respectable Bath family, she grew up in the shadow of her older brother, Thomas, who seemed to her the very picture of courage. He was six years her senior — charming, clever, always ready with a teasing remark or a steadying hand when she stumbled. To Evie, he was invincible.

When the Great War began, Thomas enlisted almost at once. Their parents had been proud, and Evelyn had tried to be too, though the knot in her chest told another story. His letters came often at first — cheerful, reassuring, always signed with a promise: “I’ll be home before you know it, little dove.” But the letters stopped after the Gallipoli campaign. The telegram arrived weeks later: Missing in action. Presumed dead.

The words changed everything. Their mother retreated into quiet grief, their father into work, and Evelyn into silence. For months she wandered through her days in a daze of guilt and sorrow — until the newspapers began printing photographs of women in uniform, tending to soldiers with calm hands and steady hearts. Something inside her stirred. If Thomas had given his life for the wounded and the fallen, then she would give hers for the living.

At nineteen, she joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment. The work was grueling — long hours, blood, exhaustion — but it gave her purpose. The other nurses said she was too young to carry so much sorrow, yet she met each day with quiet resolve. She learned to keep her tears for the storeroom, her fears for the dark. She found strength in compassion, and a strange, aching peace in service.

Now, at twenty-two, Evie has been assigned to HMHS Britannic — the grandest hospital ship ever to sail. She can’t help but marvel at the beauty of it: the polished brass, the orderly wards, the comforting hum of the engines. But beneath it all, she feels a restlessness she cannot name. At night, when the sea sighs against the hull, she sometimes dreams of Thomas — not as he was, but as he might be now, calling to her through salt and shadow.

She wears his small silver cross beneath her uniform, a quiet vow against fear and a promise to live the life he never could. To her patients, she is calm, gentle, and endlessly patient. To her fellow nurses, she is reliable. But beneath her composed exterior lies a girl still searching — for meaning, for forgiveness, and for a voice she can no longer hear.

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