War Nurse

by Sue Reid

  Back in bed again I pulled the bedclothes up over my head. I’ve been made to look a fool in front of all my patients. I don’t know how I’m going to face them again.

  When Jean came in I poured out the whole story.

  “I don’t think you’ll have a problem with the patients,” she said. Oh, I pray she’s right.

  Monday 15 January

  Jean was right. When I went on duty last night the patients smiled at me and for once they all did exactly as I asked. In a quiet moment, one of them beckoned me over. “This is for you, Nurse,” he whispered, holding out some chocolate. I think it was the first time any of my patients had called me nurse. I nearly did burst into tears then.

  Monday 5 February

  I was transferred to the Surgical ward today. Jean and I are both pleased about this – we’re working together again.

  My first proper job was to “special” a patient, who’d had his appendix removed and was recovering in a side room.

  “His temperature’s a little high,” Sister told me. “I’d like you to do the ‘obs’ every half an hour.”

  “Yes, Sister,” I said, and leaned over my patient to pop a thermometer into his mouth. And his temperature was high. Sister had told me that he’d had his operation two days ago.

  The next “obs” I had to do was check my patient’s pulse and breathing.

  Later, the surgeon popped round to see our patient. Sister unrolled the bandage from his tummy and the surgeon bent over the wound to examine it. It wasn’t red, hot or swollen – the tell-tale signs of infection. He checked his patient’s pulse. It wasn’t too fast. No clots in the lung to worry about either, then.

  After the surgeon had gone, the door to the side room opened again. It was Jean with a cup of tea for me. Was I pleased to see it – and her.

  “I’m not sure you deserve this,” she said, pretending to be annoyed. “I wish I’d been able to spend my morning sitting in a chair.”

  By lunch time my patient’s temperature had started to come down and he smiled at me for the first time. Sister came in and told me to reduce his obs to two-hourly. She looked awfully pleased. That moment when a patient starts to get better – there’s nothing like it.

  In the afternoon I had to keep an eye on a patient who’d been sick. After they come round from surgery patients are often sick. Luckily I was to hand when I saw him struggle to sit up. He looked at me. I knew that look.

  “Oh, miss, I feel awfully dizzy,” he murmured. I thrust a bowl under his mouth just in time, and then I propped him up and Sister told me to give him a little warm water and bicarbonate of soda to sip. Even with that the poor boy was sick again. Three times I had to clean up after him.

  Tuesday 13 February

  It was tea time and I was doing the TPRs. I was the only nurse on the ward, but I’d done the TPRs many times before. There was nothing to worry about.

  Holding the thermometer tightly between thumb and forefinger, I shook it firmly downwards.

  I looked down in dismay. My hand was empty. The thermometer had smashed on my starched apron. I needed a new one – fast.

  I scrabbled helplessly on the floor, trying to find the broken bits. Without them I’d never be allowed a new one. I couldn’t find any of it! The bits had simply vanished – rolled under a floorboard or behind a piece of furniture. Empty-handed I raced up to the Quartermaster’s office. I told him what had happened. For a full five minutes I pleaded with him.

  “Rules is rules,” he said. But at last, grudgingly, he agreed to replace it. He was not pleased. Even then I wasn’t allowed to take the new thermometer away with me. First I had to fill in a form, saying what had happened to the wretched thing, and then I had to get it signed by an MO. It’s another of those mysterious army rules that I find so baffling.

  Only then did it dawn on me that the patients were probably still on their own. I tore back to the ward. Ahead of me someone was advancing slowly towards the ward. Matron! I looked at her back in horror. What would she think when she discovered that the patients were on their own? I’ll really be on the mat for this, I thought despairingly. I watched as she opened the doors. Legs like jelly, I crept in behind her.

  My luck was in. The patients weren’t on their own! Jean was back! Later, she explained. “I saw you vanish down the corridor so I came back straightaway.”

  I was so relieved that I could have hugged her.

  “You were lucky,” said Bunty, when I told the girls later. “Let me tell you about the time that happened to me.”

  “Did it really happen to you, too?” Molly asked, wide-eyed.

  “Oh yes,” she said airily.

  “Were you in awful trouble?” Molly asked.

  “Oh no. The patients covered for me! They said I was in the annexe – by the time Matron had searched every corner of it, I’d nipped back into the ward. Matron didn’t know quite what to think. It was a pretty close shave though.”

  “Bunty!” gasped Molly.

  I gave Bunty a searching look. “Really?” I said.

  Bunty’s lips were twitching. Suddenly a big laugh burst out of her. “Oh, you are such sillies! Of course not,” she said.

  Wednesday 14 February

  Just before I went off duty this evening, the stretcher bearers rushed into the ward. There’d been a motorcycle accident. Its rider skidded on the wet road and crashed into a tree. As there are no streetlights now because of the blackout it’s very hard to see anything at all outside at night – and it’s especially a problem now the days are so short. Jean says that there have been several motorcycle crashes since she started work on the Surgical ward. It reminded me that we’re at war. It probably sounds peculiar, but sometimes I forget that. In this hospital, with no war casualties to deal with yet, we’re cocooned from the worst of it.

  I’m in such a spot. I’ve had a letter from Giles and I don’t know what to say to him.

  Thursday 15 February

  This morning the doors had barely shut behind the Colonel and his party, when the stretcher bearers rushed in again. Another motorcycle accident. Another broken leg.

  While we were waiting for our patient to return to the ward – leg swathed in Plaster of Paris – we prepared a special bed for him. It would be twelve or more hours before the plaster set, and we needed to keep the leg absolutely straight, so I held up the mattress while one of our QAs – Nurse Jackson – put boards over the bed’s metal frame. Then we lifted the foot of the bed and put blocks underneath to raise it. This would help our patient’s blood flow the right way – towards his heart and head. That’s important when the patient can’t move around in bed.

  The plaster was still damp when our patient was put to bed, so we put a mackintosh sheet under him to keep him dry. Then Nurse Jackson put a special cradle over his leg to keep the bedclothes off it while I was sent off to fill up some hot-water bottles.

  When I returned with the filled bottles Nurse Jackson told me to place them around our patient’s plastered leg.

  “Now tell me why we do this, Nurse,” she said.

  “It helps dry the plaster,” I told her promptly.

  “And we need to keep the patient warm too, don’t we?” Nurse Jackson said, tucking a blanket round him and directing me to put more bottles into the bed.

  “Not too close, Nurse, in case you burn him,” she said, turning and smiling at our patient.

  “Is that all right?” I asked him anxiously.

  “That’s fine, miss,” he said. “But I wish you could do something about this bed. It’s awfully hard.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” said Nurse Jackson, “but we must keep your leg straight. We don’t want to make it worse, do we?” She turned to smile at me, one eyebrow raised. I smiled back. I like Nurse Jackson. Unlike some of the QAs she doesn’t treat me as if I’ve never been on a ward before.

  Just before go
ing off duty I heard a cry behind the screen. “Oh, Nurse, stop. Please, stop!” a voice begged.

  What was the matter with that patient? I wondered. He’d lain for several hours on hard boards and I was worried that his back was hurting him. I peeped round the screens. Nurse Jackson was tickling the motorcyclist’s bare toes.

  “Got to keep the circulation going, my lad,” I heard her say to him, chuckling.

  Wednesday 21 February

  The strangest sound woke me last night – a sort of distant muffled thudding. But when I woke properly, the night was quiet again and I went back to sleep. Much later I woke again. This time I could hear vehicles – lots of them – driving up to the hospital. I padded over to the window, but of course I couldn’t see anything because of the blackout shutters. Jean was still fast asleep.

  In the morning I’d forgotten all about it. But when I went downstairs I noticed that the corridors were busier than usual, and everyone’s faces looked drawn and very grim. Suddenly I remembered the noise that had woken me, and the vehicles I’d heard driving up to the hospital. I felt sure then that something awful must have happened, and I found myself trembling as I walked down the long corridor towards the Surgical ward.

  I don’t think anything could have prepared me for what I saw there.

  The corridor was lined with men, lying, still in uniform, or bits of it, on stretchers. Dozens of them, all with dirty blackened faces and hair. Some of them stared blankly at me as I stepped carefully round them. Others just stared straight ahead unseeingly.

  Slowly I pushed open the ward doors. I was dreading what I’d see inside.

  If it had been bad in the corridor, this was even worse.

  It was chaos. I saw MOs, masks on their faces, khaki sleeves rolled up, striding hastily from bed to bed. On the pillows lay faces black with dirt and oil. Burned arms, hands and legs lay still on the white sheets or under cradles. I saw a QA gently lift a man’s burned arm to slip a towel underneath. Stuff oozed out. He didn’t complain, though I could tell that it hurt him very much.

  For a moment I stood there, swaying. I felt sick. I didn’t feel as if I was in a hospital at all. The sight before me – it was what I imagined a field hospital at the Front to be like – except here we weren’t being shot at. Then Nurse Jackson saw me. She took off her mask as she hurried up to me. A ship had been blown up by a floating mine in the Channel, she told me quickly. All those men who’d been picked up had been taken to the nearest hospitals. A lot of them had been brought here, I thought. As I looked around the ward, I couldn’t see any of the patients I’d nursed yesterday. What was I to do? I thought in a panic. I tried to concentrate on what Nurse Jackson was telling me.

  “Heat up some hot-water bottles for me, will you, Nurse?” I heard her say. “We need to get the patients warm. They’re in shock,” she explained. You can tell that from the look in their eyes – as though they’re far away; as though they don’t know where they are. I’d read that somewhere in my Red Cross Manual, or had I?

  I don’t know anything I thought humbly. I looked at the QAs. They looked calm and competent as they bent over their patients – and suddenly I felt so relieved that they were there. How dare I think of myself as a nurse?

  Nurse Jackson’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

  “The surgeon can’t treat them until we’ve treated the shock. We can’t wash them – or even undress them. So jump to it, please, Nurse.”

  Afterwards I went round the ward, holding cups of water and sweet tea up to blistered lips. The ward doors slammed. Another man was being wheeled out to Theatre.

  Nurse Jackson was dabbing gentian violet on to a man’s badly burned chest. He’d come back from Theatre earlier and it had to be done three times a day. She was wearing a mask and in a whisper told me to put one on too. It protects the men from picking up germs from us – and us from the smell. The smell from our burned patients is terrible. But the look in their eyes – that’s far worse.

  I watched while she went round the room again, irrigating the men’s eyes. Soon she was called to a desperately injured patient. She told me to take over.

  “You know what to do now,” she said briskly.

  My hands were shaking as I held a kidney bowl under a man’s cheek to stop liquid running down on to the sheets. I could hardly bear to look at his face. I mustn’t funk it, I whispered to myself again and again. I mustn’t.

  I could see Jean, moving from bed to bed. She looked so calm – unlike me.

  By the time I’d been round the ward once it was time to begin again. We were so busy that we couldn’t stop to think about what was happening there – or anything else.

  But when I left the ward it flooded over me. And now – reliving it again as I write my diary – I feel sick again. Jean told me that my face was green when I came off duty. “It’s all right now – just a bit pale,” she said, smiling tiredly at me and switching off the light. I tried to smile back, but I couldn’t.

  In just this one day I feel as if I’ve seen more suffering than most people see in a whole lifetime. The safe little cocoon I’ve been living in these last few months has been blown away. When I’d got back to my room I’d pulled out Giles’s letter. I was thinking about him, but not just him – I was thinking about all the wounded sailors on our ward – and all the others, too. I could do so little for any of them, but somehow – by writing to Giles – I felt as if it was one more – tiny – thing I could do for them. Does that make any sense?

  Thursday 22 February

  It seemed only a few hours later that I was again manoeuvring my way down the corridor past the stretchers filled with wounded men. I was exhausted and I hadn’t even started work yet. All night, scenes from that nightmare ward had played themselves over and over in my head.

  Inside the ward, a QA was giving a patient sips of water from a cup. “Take over, please, Nurse,” she said when she saw me. As I got near the bed that awful smell hit me. Trying to ignore it, I turned to smile at the patient. My smile stuck on my face.

  It was awful!

  His face was all wrong – burnt and twisted out of shape – as though a small child had tried to mould a face out of plasticine. I’d seen plenty of burned men yesterday, but this. . . I forced myself to smile, but it was a pretty feeble one.

  “Hello, Nurse,” he said to me slowly, his lips stretching painfully into something resembling a smile. His courage made me feel ashamed. I took the cup from the QA and sat down next to him.

  I stayed at his side until the QA came back to fetch me. “We need more sterile towels, Nurse,” she said briskly. “And then I’d like you to strip and make up the empty beds. Hurry up now!”

  “Doesn’t he need specialing?” I asked her timidly.

  “Look about you, Nurse,” she said sadly. “Every one of these boys needs special nursing.”

  As I was making up the beds, tucking grey blankets over the long, red mackintosh sheets, I wondered who’d been in them last. At that, my mind just shut down.

  I feel such rage inside me now when I think about the War. I tell myself to try and live it down. Being angry won’t help anyone. But it’s awfully hard.

  Saturday 24 February

  Slept badly again last night. I dread getting up in the morning now. Each time I push open the ward doors I have to screw up all my courage. Some of the things I’ve seen these last days are too awful even to write in my diary. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it. This morning, lying in bed, I felt worse still. I wanted to run away – leave it all behind. I wanted my life to go back to how it was before this awful war began. I just couldn’t cope any more.

  I could hear Jean thrashing around in bed, as though she couldn’t sleep either.

  I got up to open the blackout shutters and poked my head outside. I could see the sea shimmering in the early morning sun. When I turned round Jean was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. S
he gave me a smile, but I was sure she felt as bad as I did. I was about to say something when she said, “Good morning, Kitty”, climbed out of bed and quickly and efficiently pulled out her nurse’s uniform. I watched as deftly she made up a fresh cap. I got dressed, too, and hunted for my cap. I found it, lying on a box. I looked at it. I’d worn it for a few days but it would do for another one.

  “Kitty, that cap’s looking a bit sad. Let me make up another one for you.” Jean pinned a fresh white cap on my hair. She handed me her mirror and I peered at it. The face that stared back at me wasn’t the sad, drained face I’d expected to see. It looked tired but competent too under the crisply starched white cap. A nurse’s face. Suddenly I felt a whole lot better.

  Today was just another day for us VADs. I smiled at Jean – a really warm smile this time and we went downstairs together. Once I’d thought she was a cold fish. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Sunday 25 February

  At about five o’clock this afternoon, Sister came up to me. She looked harassed.

  “Ah, Nurse Langley,” she said briskly. “Theatre’s just rung and told me they need extra help. Would you go down there, please.”

  “What – me?” I gulped, looking round wildly for Jean. Surely Sister didn’t mean me. I’ve had precious little Theatre training.

  “Yes, you,” said Sister briskly. “Run along now.”

  Jean was just entering the ward as I left. I threw her an anguished glance.