The Country Nurse Remembers

by Mary J. Macleod

  I thought about Jasper for some time, and I decided that I must be a snob. I wouldn’t want to live in the way that he did. I would be ashamed of being married to him. This was awful! I was awful! My family was nothing wonderful. We were very ordinary people, and yet I knew that I wanted something and someone with more education and more future than Jasper had. And yet he was so honest and had not tried to take advantage in any way, treating me with more respect than many well-educated men might.

  Stupidly, I tried to talk to Mum and Dad about it.

  ‘I don’t know what you expect,’ Mum said. ‘He sounds a very nice person to me.’

  Dad countered her by saying, ‘He is far too old for you, and you don’t want to marry beneath you.’

  I should not have mentioned it!

  Farewell to Ham Green

  I enjoyed my six months at Ham Green. It was all so very different from the main hospitals: more relaxed, younger patients, and a lot of fun.

  The young men, back from the most horrendous Japanese POW camps, never mentioned their ordeals, but I saw many signs of the brutality they had suffered: missing fingers, a missing ear in one case, scars from thrashings and deep marks from tight metal wrist restraints. If ever we approached them about these signs of their imprisonment, they would shrug them off with ‘It doesn’t hurt now!’ or a jocular ‘You should see the other guy!’ They were all ‘mates’ and were determined to make up for lost time by having fun: childish, boyish fun for the most part, although there were times when we had to cast a blind eye on an empty bed late in the evening, knowing it would be filled by a very hung-over patient in the morning.

  The village of Pill was reputed to have thirteen pubs! The lads had their own tankards, or beer glasses, that went to the pub with them. Although no one was likely to catch TB from a glass, the infection was not fully understood, and the boys were more readily accepted if complete with a glass of their own.

  So they had fun. We young nurses were often chased around the wards (never again with a spider, though); the men would attack their mates’ beds after we had gone and make them into the ‘apple pie beds’ of boarding schools, or they would pretend to be very ill by groaning horribly just to get a nurse to bend over them, only to grab her, pick her up and dump her on the bed or sit her on a high shelf.

  Amazingly for an isolation hospital (or any hospital) there was a huge wooden sink in the block kitchen. It was very old and rough but still held water. It was not unusual for a couple of these young jokers to pick up a nurse and dump her in this sink, then turn the taps on. More than once I cycled back to the nurse’s home wet through to change before Sister came round. None of us minded. These were young men who had suffered and witnessed terrible things, so we were happy to be part of their recovery—uncomfortable though it was sometimes!

  The Old, Old Wards

  On my return, reluctantly, to the Bristol hospitals, I found myself on night duty on a men’s ward in the very oldest part of the oldest building. The hospital was built beside the docks and had suffered badly in the Blitz. Many advised knocking it down and rebuilding because it was very out of date, but there was not the money or the time to spare. We were still trying to catch up on the wartime backlog of patients—not just surgical cases, but the treatment of colitis, urinary problems, ulcers of various types, cancers (which were more frequently fatal then than they are now) and skin conditions.

  I was now in my third year, having passed all the necessary exams along the way, so I was in charge of the ward at night. I had a junior, of course, and also an orderly, as there were many heavy, or old and rather confused, patients. An ex-RAMC man, he was not a dedicated nurse, feeling that the job was beneath him; he deeply resented having to take orders from a young nurse. He slept much of the night in one of the armchairs placed in the centre of the ward for ‘up’ patients and only worked in the morning or if I asked him to help me in the night.

  There were two Night Sisters, who were always somewhere in the hospital for us to call on if there was some difficulty or emergency. When Sister’s round was due, I always woke the orderly so that he would not be in trouble, but one night Sister was earlier than expected, and as we toured the ward I realised that he was sitting very obviously and comfortably right where we would pass.

  We all had torches with rubber covers—so that we could see the patients without putting the lights on and could put the torch down without making a clatter. The sleeping orderly’s bald head glowed in the light from Sister’s torch. She stopped and gazed in disgust for a moment, then raised her rubber-covered torch and ‘bopped’—the only word for it—his head. He leapt up with more oaths than Sister was prepared to put up with, and she ordered him off the ward immediately. She must have had him dismissed because no one saw him again; after that we shared a young, hard-working junior male nurse with another ward. Male nurses were very new, and he was the only one in the hospital.

  One night, I was sitting alone at the desk with the light shining on my papers and across the polished wooden floor. Suddenly a movement caught my eye. I watched in horror as two enormous rats ran across the ward and disappeared into the sluices. What to do? I followed the intruders into the sluice, perhaps to shut them in, but they had found some way out, and there was no sign of them. I started thinking of bubonic plague (we were beside the docks) and Weil’s disease (far more likely—the organisms are carried in the urine of rats, and, as rats have no bladder, they are dribbling urine constantly). I said nothing to my junior but called Sister from the ward office. She came at once, disinclined at first to believe me but soon convinced that I was not being hysterical. However, she felt that nothing could be done until the morning. Day Sister was appalled when I gave the report. Rats? In her ward?

  The next night we were directed to a ward that had been speedily brought into use, as the other had been shut. It had been a children’s fever ward before Ham Green had been built, and it was amusing to see the ‘up’ patients trying to sit in tiny chairs meant for five-year-olds.

  God’s Blessing

  There had been an accident at the docks. The general hospital did not have a casualty department—that was at the Royal Infirmary—so I am not sure why we admitted two of the casualties. One man was only bruised and shocked, but the other one was carried in on a stretcher by very serious-looking ambulance men. (These were not the paramedics of today; the ambulance drivers were equipped with just first-aid knowledge.) It seemed that a large vessel had moved from its berth in an uncontrolled manner, causing ‘domino effect’ disasters along the quayside, with many injuries. The man was placed, still on the stretcher, on a bed. One of the ambulance men looked at me.

  ‘He’s conscious, but he has no pain. I can’t understand it.’

  The man was talking. I think I heard ‘tell the wife’ and ‘poor Bert’. The doctor arrived and spoke reassuringly to him but looked shocked himself.

  Only then did I get a look at the poor man.

  I know many nurses in times of war, fire, terrorism and famine have seen and will continue to see and deal with all manner of horrors, but, although I had now seen death many times, it had been in controlled surroundings and was frequently not unexpected. This was quite different!

  There seemed to be little recognisable shape to his body below the waist; his hands were badly crushed, but there was little bleeding. He lay quite still, conscious but unaware of his condition.

  I began to try to undress him, but the fabric of his clothes seemed to be intertwined with his injured body. I looked at the doctor for guidance, but he merely shook his head.

  I turned my attention to the man’s boots. I untied the lace on one and began to remove it. As I picked up the boot, his foot came with it.

  And still he was feeling nothing. ‘Thank God for that’ was my thought.

  He died several hours later, still awake, still without pain, but also without the entire lower part of his body. The degree of shock had shut everything down, blood flow, pain, realisation: every
thing.

  He had been working near the bollard that the huge steel hawser was wound around on the quayside. When the vessel pulled away from the side far too quickly, the hawser unwound out of control, whipping to and fro. Our poor man was caught in it and the lower half of his body torn apart.

  Later in the little chapel, it seemed to me that although we knew the lack of pain was due to shock, it was also God’s blessing.

  The event was reported in the papers (without the horrendous details, of course), where our poor man was called ‘Hawser Man’.

  Time Rolls By

  The years of training seemed to rush past in something of a blur. We were always busy at work, we went out in off-duty time if we had any money, we chatted in the nurses’ home when we didn’t and gradually I learnt more about everyday life, about the girls’ families, about world affairs and about many things that girls of twelve or thirteen would already know these days.

  For instance, I was well into my third year of training before I heard about lesbians—though I still thought that lesbians were just ladies living in the same house and being very fond of each other rather than wanting boyfriends. I think I was married and with a family before the details were made clear to me.

  More amazing still was how the nurses’ and doctors’ remarks about the theatre porters went right over my head for nearly all my training. We had two hard-working, rather effeminate porters to take the patients to and from theatre. The good-natured teasing of some student doctors about ‘all girls together’ when they came into the anaesthetic room was a mystery to me. But I must have known somehow that it was a bit odd, because I did not feel I could ask about it. Today we would say that they were gay, but in those days that word only meant ‘jolly’ or ‘happy’.

  I was still an innocent and only gradually got to know things. I often wonder how many times I must have put my foot in it by saying the wrong thing! I think my father might have been slightly innocent in this way too, because I remember him remarking to me on one occasion, years later, that a certain woman was ‘very masculine looking’. I don’t think he had any idea that it was more than that.

  My understanding of the patients, who came from varying backgrounds, went fairly smoothly. My association with all my colleagues, and those in authority over us, was sometimes smooth and sometimes very difficult. I didn’t know when people were being serious or joking, for instance, and my own sense of humour was occasionally not understood by the other nurses. When I went out with a boy, I had little conversation and probably tried too hard to impress him. I felt inadequate with a boyfriend, but if I didn’t have one I felt unwanted. The term ‘boyfriend’ in those days meant just that you were going out with a boy. We did a bit of kissing and cuddling at the end of an evening, usually on the steps of the nurses’ home, with nurses passing in and out of the door all the time, but nothing more. The name implies much more now.

  I was terrified of anyone in authority, and I am now sorry for many Sisters who tried to be if not friendly then at least chatty. I was totally unable to respond to their overtures. However, at the end of one three-month spell of night duty, which had been particularly arduous, the Night Sister (of whom everyone was afraid) came back to the ward specially in order to thank me for my hard work and to wish me luck for my future. My colleagues had difficulty believing me, but this incident taught me some self-esteem. Another boost came from a nurse who was leaving and wanted some help in composing her letter of resignation and her application for her next post. Several girls were there and offered all sorts of advice, to which she said: ‘No, I want Julia to tell me what she thinks.’ This small event helped me to see that I might have some aptitude outside hospital work and exams.

  None of us were good ‘citizens’ because we were housed and fed and so had no worries about rent, food shopping, etc., and apart from clothes and fares our monthly salary was almost pocket money. That was the only budgeting we had to do. We led a hard-working and restricted life, but one that was also quite protected from outside responsibilities. So reaching out towards adulthood sometimes felt natural, but it often felt as though I were clawing my way over a precipice.

  Gradually learning and gaining some authority of our own, we became second- and third-year nurses, and our salary rose to a dizzying £7 a month. After finals and before I left Bristol, I was ‘Acting’ Staff Nurse for a while. Prestige and responsibility, but no more money!

  New young girls started their training, and I tried to remember how I had felt. I hope I was reasonably kind and understanding, but I’m sure my position of authority sometimes went to my head. But I noticed that from the start the new nurses all seemed to have far more confidence and an ease of manner that I was only then developing.

  Finals loomed and off-duties were spent swotting, huddled under blankets in our rooms—there was no heating in the bedrooms, and the radio was always on in the warm sitting room.

  There were practical exams in which I always felt frightened, but I must have passed because the results of both parts were satisfactory. There were also various subjects offered in which to gain prizes. I do not remember why I chose ophthalmology, but I was astounded when I won a prize. This was presented to me at the same time as the State Registration Certificate at a ceremony in the university. Sir Brian Horrocks, a wartime military hero, presented us all with whatever prize or certificate we had won and made a valiant attempt to talk to us: a lot of young girls! Having been used to hundreds of men under his command, he did not do a very good job, but we all laughed politely where we thought he was being funny. We couldn’t wait for the tea afterwards, however.

  Mum and Dad came, and I realised that it was the first time that they had ever seen me win anything, as parents had not been invited to school prize-givings.

  I had made up my mind to leave and go to London to pursue my ambition to be a Theatre Nurse (or Sister one day), and this time Mum and Dad did not object, probably because I was now twenty-one, officially an adult and not a child just out of school. (Of my twenty-first birthday, I remember nothing at all.) Robert, too, now had his own friends at school, had joined the Cubs and was generally busy with his own affairs. I would miss him, though.

  A State-Registered Nurse

  Dad took me to the station in Bath.

  I had saved a little money because my first post was not a live-in position and I would be paying rent for a small bedsit. I was nervous but excited to be starting at a prestigious and specialist hospital.

  Dad stood on the platform as I waved from the train that bore me away to the next phase of my life.

  I worked in the theatre of a large London hospital for a year until marrying, settling abroad and having a family. It would be twenty years before I once again resumed my career, when I became the District Nurse on a remote Scottish island.