Nelly was born in Wakefield in 1891 the first child to George and Elizabeth Spindler.  Nelly had an younger sister, Lillie, born in 1896.  George and his family were the only people named Spindler in Wakefield at the time.  There are two other possible children for George and Elizabeth: according to a freebmd search, they are George Edward born 1902, just missing the census in 1901, and May born in 1904.George Kealey Spindler married Elizabeth Snowden in Leeds, the hometown of Elizabeth, in the summer of 1890, but by the birth of Nellie the family were in Wakefield.George, the head of the household, had been born in Willingham, Lincolnshire and was a serving policeman in the Wakefield City Police Force, holding the rank of Sergeant and as a result the family had to live within the city boundary.  The family in 1901 were living on Stanley Road in the parish of St Andrews, which is well within the city limits.  By the time 1911 came around George had risen to the rank of Inspector in the City Force.I suppose you could say life was 'normal' for the young Nellie as her and her siblings grew, well as normal as it can be with the country being at war in South Africa (1899-1902), Queen Victoria coming to the end of her long life (1819-1901) and subsequent festivities at the crowning of a new ruler for the Commonwealth - King Edward VII.The peace that had been known since 1902 soon came to an abrupt end in 1914 when war was declared - The Great War, a war, hopefully, to end all wars !

Young men answered their nations call and volunteered to serve - after all they said it would be over by Christmas.  The confrontations and battles were so bad that replacements were badly need and eventually the volunteers were replaced by conscriptions - not just taking the single men but now calling on men with families.  There were exceptions and these 'reserved occupations' included miners, farmers and others that served their country just as well at home as abroad.  During this period the police and fire service were given notice of being called up and some had to attend medical examinations in readiness for the call.The men are answering the call but there was also a call for young women - nurses.

Nellie was one such woman, a trained nurse who answered the nations call and joined the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service which had been formed in 1902, formed from the Army Nursing Service of 1881.  In the first weeks of the war the QAIMNS were mobilised for duty with the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF), the numbers initially of nurses being 3,000 in 1914 but this number had raisen dramatically by 1918 to 23,000.  These very brave women went to wherever there would be a wounded soldier and were present in all the theatres of war and faced similar dangers as those of the soldiers in or near the front lines.Nellie, along with other nurses worked in the Casualty Clearing Stations (CCS).  These Clearing Stations were usually a safe distance from from the front,  and normally very large tents - some had up to 800 beds, but the 44th CCS in Brandhoek were Nellie was stationed in the summer of 1917 was closer to the danger than normal as it was positioned next to a railway and a munitions dump. 

The 44th CCS has particular expertise in abdominal wounds which needed to be treated with the utmost speed due to the amount of blood loss and the danger of infection and the high mortality rate. July the 31st 1917 was an especially busy day as this was the first day of the Battle of Passendale and the CCS where Nellie worked was overwhelmed with casualties.