Abbie Sweetwine

By the time of her retirement in 1969, she was a major in the United States Air Force. She returned to live in Cocoa, Florida and then moved to Rockledge where she lived with her sisters for over thirty years.

In January 1953, she was invited to a celebratory luncheon of the Royal Variety Charity at the Savoy Hotel. They presented her with a cigarette case with her name engraved upon it. The work of Sweetwine and the USAF team are credited with inspiring the development of the use of paramedics in Britain.

Sweetwine is best known for her involvement with the Harrow & Wealdstone rail crash. During the morning rush hour on October 8, 1952, a three-train collision at Harrow & Wealdstone station near London, England, resulted in hundreds of casualties. Members of the 494th Medical Group of the United States Air Force were on board one of the trains, and called their new hospital station in South Ruislip. The Air Force Hospital sent out an emergency response team, all trained in battlefield medicine, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Weideman of the USAF which included seven doctors and one nurse, Sweetwine.

She began her service life in the army. By July 1946, she had served in Provident Hospital at Fort Lauderdale, at the Whitaker Memorial Hospital in Newport, Virginia, and with the U.S. Migratory set-up at Belle Glade, Florida and in North Charleston, South Carolina.

She graduated in nursing from Brewster Hospital, the first Black hospital in Jacksonville, in 1942 and received her R.N. a few months later.

Abbie Sweetwine (28 May 1921 – 7 May 2009) was an American nurse remembered for her work during the Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash. In a headline at the time, the Daily Mirror described her as "The Angel of Platform 6".