8
Life Jackets and Pith Helmets
With Morocco on the starboard side and Portugal fittingly on the port side security was at a maximum as the convoy began to approach the notoriously dangerous Strait of Gibraltar. After years of darkness because of blackouts in Britain it was somewhat of a surprise to see Gibraltar bathed in light in the distance. The Strait which separates the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic is less than nine miles wide at its narrowest point and while German U-boats had paid a fearful toll – nine had been sunk and another ten badly damaged in the area – they still posed a serious threat to Allied convoys.
Convoy KMF.33 had stood off the coast of Portugal for much of the afternoon and slipped into the Med in the darkness without incident. It was a rocky night on board the Strathnaver as it ran through the Strait of Gibraltar with its engines at full speed. It was a much slimmed-down version after a number of the Royal Naval escorts that had shepherded the convoy to safety from Gourock handed responsibility to other destroyers to provide protection en route to Port Said in the north of Egypt. A number of troopships had also moved away in the night, but both the Strathnaver and her sister ship the Strathaird continued on the journey to Bombay.
The calmness of the Mediterranean and the bright summer sun meant that A Deck was crowded with sun-seekers the next morning. But Madge wasn’t one of them.
The VADs had already been given a general warning about the dangers of keeping a diary but the previous day one had been reprimanded in front of the entire mess hall for keeping a notebook. The army officer who was in charge of the briefing made it very clear that the main reason the military were banned from keeping diaries was the worry of important information falling into enemy hands. Madge had paid particular notice to what was said as she was also writing regularly in her own notebook; she had promised her sisters that she would keep a diary during what she hoped would be happy times overseas. After that incident, though, she made a careful examination of the contents of her little book but remained convinced there was nothing that would be in the slightest of interest to the enemy whatsoever.
Madge kept the diary upbeat and didn’t mention things like the German attack on the destroyer or the endless nightmares the nurses on board suffered over the safety of their loves in cities still being bombed back in the UK. So she happily continued until the next VAD was reprimanded, in even sterner terms than the last. It was made clear that, if necessary, the ultimate sanction would be invoked and the implied threat of a court martial put an end to her diary too.
In any case, Madge had plenty of studying to keep her occupied. A series of mandatory lectures on tropical diseases were given in the Ladies’ Lounge to prepare the VADs for the medical problems in India and Burma that they would rarely have encountered at home. The first half dozen had the nurses’ full attention but they became repetitive and Madge would regularly find herself staring out of the porthole, mesmerised by the blue of the sea. The lessons certainly sank in because Madge could recite by heart, among many others, the fact that onchocerciasis (river blindness) was caused by worms or sandfly, sandfly fever was a virus carried by midges, sleeping sickness was caused by tsetse flies, typhus fever was an infection carried by lice, ticks, mites, flies or rats and yellow fever was a virus transferred by the bite of a mosquito.
The 180 wpm shorthand speed Madge had achieved at the commercial college was helpful when it came to taking notes. Tedious as the lectures were, they provided early warning of the complex problems the VADs would soon be facing.
One night at supper, Madge found herself engaged in conversation with a charming ex-surveyor called Stanley. They had been exchanging light-hearted banter when suddenly his expression became intensely serious. He checked that their neighbours weren’t listening and leaned in. ‘If I tell you something, will you swear not to repeat it?’
‘Well . . . I suppose so.’
Stanley pulled out a cutting of a Daily Express article from January 1943. It told the story of RMS Strathallan, another of the ‘White Sisters’, and the danger it had faced in the Mediterranean. Early in November 1942, the troop carrier had come under attack when it took the same route as the KMF.33 to take Allied personnel to Morocco and Algeria. Just after midnight on 21 December disaster struck. Two torpedoes were fired at the Strathallan by German U-boat U-562. One missed, but the other scored a direct hit and exploded in the engine room. Water flooded through a gaping hole on the port side and the ship began to keel.
Fires broke out below deck as men scrambled for safety but two Queen Alexandra nurses, Sister Julie and Sister Olive, went deep into the lower levels of the ship where they knew there would be men in the on-board hospital in desperate need of help. By now the tiny room was beginning to fill with more injured men seeking medical aid. Men with serious burns. Men coughing and choking from smoke inhalation. Men half blinded by oil that had sprayed everywhere in the engine room. The sisters treated every one of them.
The Strathallan, though irreparably damaged and listing at a frightening angle, simply refused to go down. The sea was calm and several Royal Navy destroyers were steaming to the rescue so a halt was called to the evacuation until first light in the morning when nearly five thousand people were saved in one of the most successful rescue operations in British maritime history.
‘What a relief that so many were saved but what a terrible thing to happen!’ Madge whispered when she had come to the end of the article.
There had been no mention whatsoever aboard the Strathnaver of the tragedy and after carefully reading the cutting, Madge gave a shudder before consigning the evening to memory and keeping her vow of silence. The fear of German submarines was bad enough as it was, she didn’t want to make the other girls any more panicked.
Within days convoy KMF.33 reached Port Said and slipped into the Suez Canal, where the heat was so intense it left Madge gasping. If it was that hot in the Middle East, Madge began to wonder exactly what she would be letting herself in for in India.
Commandant Corsar was so concerned about the effects of the sun that her contingent of VADs was issued with pith helmets. The girls were told that if they were on deck between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., the big white helmets, made of cork and covered in white cloth, must be worn at all times. Madge hadn’t been given so much as a tin hat during that week of bombing in London so to be told to wear a pith helmet amused her no end.
Miss Corsar also decided that it was time for the issue of tropical kit, which was a lot cooler than the navy blue outfits that soaked up the heat even in the shade. The tropical blouses were still navy blue but made of a much lighter and cooler cotton, but the problem was that if the girls wanted to enjoy the sunshine, they now had to wear a pith helmet as well as a life jacket. It was all so cumbersome, but at least the life jacket ruling was eased when the Strathnaver got into the Suez Canal.
‘Dear old Gertrude really has no other option,’ laughed Vera. ‘It’s so narrow it’s almost a physical impossibility to fall into the Suez Canal,’ she said, eliciting giggles from the other girls.
Certainly, the biggest surprise for Vera, Phyl and Madge was not so much the 102-mile length of the canal but the width. At just 200 to 300 feet wide, Madge could look down from A Deck and just see desert either side of the boat, no water at all. After being at sea for so many weeks it was comforting to see dry land again with people and little settlements with their lights glowing in the dark.
The first evening they were on the Suez Canal, Madge, Sally, Phyl and Vera decided to take a moonlit after-dinner stroll on A Deck. The burning heat had eased and Madge was happily chatting to Vera when a cheeky-looking and unusually tiny officer gave them a mock salute and grinned. Without any invitation, he walked alongside the girls and began talking to them about the day the Suez Canal was opened.
‘Is this chap going to tell us a joke?’ whispered Phyl.
‘No, but he sounds like a bit of fun,’ said Sally as several other nurses stopped to listen and asked him to speak up
because the wind was making it difficult to hear.
He said a French consortium had financed and constructed the canal and the honour of becoming the first vessel to navigate the waterway had been bestowed on the French Imperial yacht L’Aigle, with Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, on board.
The night before the official opening in November 1869 a huge fleet of ships, including HMS Newport, drew up behind it. That was until Commander George Strong Nares (Royal Navy) ordered a total blackout on board his vessel and skilfully navigated it to the head of the queue in front of L’Aigle.
The French did not see the funny side when they woke to find the entrance to the canal blocked and were even less amused when the glory of becoming the first to sail from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea was snatched from their grasp by HMS Newport.
A sizeable crowd had gathered alongside the four girls and everyone began to cheer the fact that the Royal Navy had left the French in second place.
‘There’s more to come so let’s have a bit of hush,’ the little officer said with a grin.
When the noise had quietened, Madge’s new friend added that the Admiralty were so upset over the diplomatic incident caused by Commander Nares that he was issued with an official reprimand. ‘They were so irate, in fact, that a few months later Nares was promoted from commander to captain,’ said the officer, who then bowed to the laughing crowd and strolled off into the darkness.
‘That was great!’ said Madge. ‘I think he may have told that tale a few times, but it was still really entertaining.’
The mood on board the ship brightened considerably over this stage of the voyage. The VADs never tired of throwing pennies to the ‘gully-gully men’ who were stark naked and would happily dive from their ‘bumboats’ into the grubby water to retrieve the coins. In return the men had devised an ingenious way of sending up, by rope, bunches of bananas, sponges, bags of nuts and even some erotic carvings which Madge and her friends took one look at and burst into giggles. British troops guarding both sides of the canal made a point of waving and whistling to the nurses, and the nurses were so relieved to see some new faces that they blew lots of kisses and waved back.
There was a three-day stopover in Suez, where the remaining convoy refuelled, took on new supplies and, most important of all, filled up with fresh water. That meant that Madge, after days of having to bathe in sea water, could indulge in the ultimate luxury of a long lazy soak in fresh water. The VADs weren’t allowed off the boat during the short break in Suez, but the joy of a fresh-water bath full of Coty bath cubes and the lifting of blackout restrictions, which meant that the girls could continue to read after dark, helped to ease the disappointment of not being allowed to explore.
Several of the smaller ships had gone their own way after the stopover and what remained of convoy KMF.33 resumed the voyage. Because the slower vessels had left, it meant there was no need for speed restriction. Even so, it wasn’t until well into the Indian Ocean and the home run across to Bombay that the full splendour of the Strathnaver was revealed. As the knots slowly increased and the bow lifted and plunged, Madge gripped the railings round A deck with both hands when she gazed over the side. A pod of dolphins raced with ease alongside the troop carrier and the wind was so strong it almost took her breath away. Madge, for once, was glad she was wearing a life jacket. She took deep breaths of the bracing fresh air and looked out across the horizon. Finally, this feels like an adventure, she said to herself.
Not so for Vera and Phyl, who once again suffered the tummy-turning misery of seasickness. Instead of staying on deck and letting the fresh air work its magic the girls went down to their cabin which made them feel even worse. Madge reminded them that the best thing to do with seasickness was to look at the horizon, never the sea. But they didn’t take her advice.
In their absence, Madge got chatting to some of the other girls on board. Some were fun from the moment they got up to the last minutes of the day while some would never talk but it was clear from the sadness in their faces that they were troubled. Really troubled. Others were looking for a new start to life. There were girls determined to forget the bitterness of broken marriages and there were wives who felt that by volunteering for nursing service in the Far East they would be closer to their husbands’ suffering as Japanese prisoners of war.
There were also the same social divides which blighted society back home, and it soon became apparent that some of the VADs had signed up wanting to ‘do their bit’ but not really to get their hands dirty.
Four weeks had passed and they were on the last leg of their journey. 108 Baker Street felt like a lifetime ago. Vera and Phyl had been holed up in the cabin on and off for almost a week, and Sally was also feeling seasick. Poor girls, I do feel sorry for them, Madge thought. But I’ll be damned if I let them waste their final days on board!
On the penultimate night of the journey, Madge got up and handed her travelling companions their life jackets. Mimicking their boat drill instructor, she said, ‘Fall in; we’re going up on deck.’ The act was so corny the cabin filled with laughter and the sickly trio stumbled to their feet and followed her. The sea had calmed to a millpond and they were just in time to enjoy a sunset of such beauty that it almost eased the nausea, and they even managed a nibble or two at dinner.
As their time on board the Strathnaver came to an end, promises of undying love were made. Lovers kissed tenderly under the stars. Proposals came from men on bended knees. Dreams of a future free of war and destruction were woven. Military and home addresses back in Blighty were exchanged. Couples still strolling on A Deck as midnight approached were in despair that they hadn’t plucked up the courage to say the things they meant to say before time ran out.
‘It was probably just as well they didn’t,’ Madge said to Vera and Phyl with a wry smile. ‘Imagine what sort of mess some of them could have got themselves into!’
9
Arriving in Bombay
As the VADs stepped onto Indian soil for the first time they were greeted by raucous cheering and a blizzard of farewell kisses blown by troops aboard the Strathnaver. The wolf-whistling and waving was soon replaced by an extended round of applause which showed just how aware the soldiers were that these could be the women, in the brutal months ahead, on whom their lives might depend. With the pride of the troops behind them, the smartly dressed contingent, with their shoulders back and their heads held high, marched towards an insecure future.
Commandant Corsar had issued instructions the night before that in addition to the standard tropical kit, stockings were to be worn when it was time to disembark. The problem was that the cotton stockings made Madge’s legs itch in the heat and her pith helmet was so big she had to hold her head high to stop it falling off.
‘We look like extras in a Charlie Chaplin film!’ she said to Phyl and Vera. She was sad to be saying goodbye to the ship after such a wonderful journey and wondered just how many of those boys would live to see their loved ones back home again.
Before she’d arrived in Bombay, Madge had visions of pink palaces, holy men, the Taj Mahal, princesses dripping in gold, elephants and the Himalayas. The reality, after the troopship docked that August, was somewhat different. Just three months earlier a freighter, the SS Fort Stikine, had arrived from Birkenhead on Merseyside with a cargo that included 1,395 tons of explosives, torpedoes, mines, shells, Spitfire fighter planes and £890,000 in gold bullion. Two days later, with the Stikine berthed in Victoria Dock, smoke from a fire that started in one of the holds was discovered, but by then it was too late and a call was issued to abandon ship. A massive explosion cut the ship in half. A second explosion was so enormous that it caused tremors which were registered more than a thousand miles away in Simla.
More than eight hundred people died in the incident. Thirteen ships were destroyed with two blown out of the water. Debris was hurled almost a mile away. Buildings burned for days and rubble-strewn streets took weeks to clear. Thousands were left homeless and the wat
erfront was a scene of such utter devastation that when she arrived, Madge assumed Bombay had been bombed by the Japanese. It looks just like the destruction caused by the V-1 rocket at Anerley, she thought.
The ruined harbour was a very sobering introduction indeed to Bombay, where the heat of the day had long since eased but been replaced by a humidity so stifling that by the time the VADs had marched the short distance to Victoria Terminus station they dripped with perspiration. The sandwiches and iced drinks provided by the local Women’s Voluntary Service were particularly welcome and reminded Madge of the time she saw the much loved WVS ladies dispensing tea and TLC on a crowded underground platform in London.
As the ambulance train left Bombay the nurses were more than grateful for the chance to freshen up and catch a quick nap. The four girls were dropped off at Kirkee station at 10.30 p.m. The drive to their destination, a transit camp, took less than fifteen minutes but it was the most exciting car ride Madge had had in almost five years because the street lighting was actually switched on and she marvelled at the sight from the window. Being late, there were many people, including children, sleeping on the pavements with only a cloth covering them. A small number were wandering along the street, while a few very old cars and lorries travelled back and forth on the main road.
When the VADs arrived at the transit camp they discovered it was an unused wing of a hospital with just fourteen beds to a ward so they had plenty of space for everybody to spread out, which made a pleasant change. In addition Madge, Vera and Phyl were once again together and by 11.30 p.m. that night three very tired but contented young nurses were all fast asleep. Sally had been billeted in another ward.
It was the first time Madge had slept under a mosquito net and the following morning they were shown how important it was not to leave the slightest crack through which even the tiniest insect could slip through.
Some Sunny Day Page 8