[7] At the start of 1912 2nd Lieutenant Lilian Franklin and McDougall (Sergeant-Major Ashley-Smith) won a power struggle with the FANY founder Edward Baker and his daughter, Katie.

She was soon in France where she drove a Belgian ambulance to pick up wounded in support of a British war hospital.

She wrote home, expressing, in a letter smuggled out to her mother, a frank desire to blow up the nearby German aerodrome with dynamite.

She led a crew of eleven made up of nurses, FANY members, and her brother who drove an ambulance.

[2] She was said to be the first bride to marry whilst wearing Khaki at her wedding at All Saints' Church in Maidenhead, on 22 January 1915.

It fell to McDougall's second in command, Mary Baxter Ellis, to demobilize the FANYs and send them back to civilian life at home.

The decision was made after seeing soldiers returning from the war and unable to get work as mechanics and it was felt that men should have the jobs.