Some Sunny Day

by Madge Lambert

  Noticing her expression, Sister Blossom explained, ‘They guard the compound and British soldiers guard the hospital. The Gurkhas are the ones who will be guarding you in your bashas at night.’ Madge turned to look again, but they had vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

  Sister Blossom gave the trio a short summary of what had happened to the war-weary little town of Chittagong over the past two years. She explained that both the port and the area had suffered heavy bombing raids by the Japanese in April and December 1942, and that many people had fled to the surrounding towns, including Comilla, which was about a hundred miles to the north. Due to its position on the Bay of Bengal, Chittagong was still strategically vital both as a deepwater port and a railway terminus and it had become an increasingly important air base from which supplies were dropped to 14th Army on the constantly changing front line. Sadly the railway workshops, which had employed so many people, had been destroyed to stop them falling under the control of the Japanese in the event that the Allied forces had to retire.

  The sister went out of her way to make the new nurses feel welcome and went to great lengths to help them understand some of the idiosyncrasies of the strange new world with which they would be dealing.

  ‘A dhobi-wallah does the washing. A punkah-wallah pulls the strap on the fans. A banyan is a shopkeeper. A dacoit is a robber. A sepoy is a soldier and a bhisti will bring you water,’ Sister Blossom explained. ‘But the most important word of all for you English nurses is char. That means tea!’

  The walk from the nurses’ bashas to the hospital had taken several minutes down a gently winding, gravelled pathway. ‘Be careful when it rains because this can be very slippery,’ warned Sister Blossom, who showed them the location of various wards and made introductions left, right and centre before they all walked back up the hill to the nurses’ mess in the main building.

  ‘It looks impressive even now,’ said Vera, after being told the building was once the residence of the last Governor General of Bengal.

  ‘I love the huge veranda with those red roses climbing either side of the main entrance,’ said Madge. ‘It looks like something out of a storybook.’

  Madge was doubly delighted to see that not only had the luggage caught up with them but there was also a neatly tied bundle of letters from home, including several from Mum. A bearer took Madge’s trunk and cabin case down to her basha but before she could decide whether to read Mum’s news first or unpack, exhaustion took over and she went for an hour’s nap.

  There was still enough light left when she woke up to make a more thorough inspection of her quarters and Madge found there was no toilet, no electricity and no running water. But the bathrooms in the communal wash house were spotlessly clean and morning, noon or night there was always a delightful aroma of jasmine. They’re an absolute dream in comparison with some of the very smelly places we experienced on the way out, Madge thought.

  Vera was in the next basha down and as the two girls went outside to meet each other Madge spotted the ‘bhisti man’, the water-carrier. ‘Assalamo aleikum,’ she said, trying to say ‘hello’ in Urdu.

  ‘Assalamo aleikum,’ he replied with a grin.

  ‘Glad to see you’re learning the language,’ said Vera, ‘but I’m not so sure about the pronunciation!’

  Of all the helpers and servants Madge’s favourite was Ahmed, her bearer, who acted much like a butler or personal assistant. He made sure her basha was always clean and tidy, but most importantly, he kept the mosquito nets in first-class order. They were so high off the ground that Madge found them difficult to pull into place. Ahmed made sure she never had to worry about that problem again because he always lowered the curtains at night as well as doing the ironing and keeping the oil lamp in pristine condition.

  On the first evening in her basha Madge sat down to write a letter to Mum, Doris and Doreen by the light of her oil lamp, but she soon gave up. This is no good, she thought. It’s casting eerie shadows all around the room and the smell is just ghastly! So she decided to write her letter in daylight the following day and instead tucked herself up in her lovely cool sheets. We’ll be starting work in the hospital tomorrow, so I do hope I sleep well. She closed her eyes and fell into a deep, restful sleep.

  It had rained overnight and after breakfast in the main building Madge, Vera and Phyl took the greatest of care as they walked down the soggy pathway and into the hospital. An orderly guided them along a corridor to a door marked ‘Matron’ and they were greeted with open arms by Olive Ferguson.

  ‘Good day, girls, am I pleased to see you!’

  Madge had become used to the warm welcomes, but the accent caught her off guard. She’d never met a New Zealander before, let alone worked for one. Vera committed the heinous crime of asking if she was Australian and the girls laughed at Matron Ferguson’s finger-wagging and mock outrage. Matron Ferguson was a tall and sturdy-looking woman with dark hair and piercing brown eyes, but her quick humour showed Madge that she wouldn’t be so hard to work for.

  With the introductions completed Madge spent her first shift on the ‘British Other Ranks’ ward. Officers were placed in different wards, although Madge soon noted that they certainly didn’t get better or special treatment from the nurses. All patients were treated the same, regardless of rank or status.

  ‘Good morning, nurse,’ said a chatty doctor. ‘I understand that this is your first shift. My name is Dr Whittaker,’ he said, ‘and as you have just arrived in India can you tell me how people are bearing up at home?’

  Madge was about to answer when he was called over to examine a poorly patient on the other side of the ward. As he walked away, she heard somebody whispering, ‘Nurse, please pop over here,’ in a broad Scottish accent.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘is there a little secret?’

  ‘Not really,’ said the Scot, still whispering. ‘I just thought, lassie, that you should know that as well as being a doctor the laddie you were just talking to is also the Commander-in-Chief of the hospital. He’s the most important man in the whole place! And I canna find my teeth this morning . . .’

  Madge was grateful for the fact that the chatty little Scot was trying to be helpful and spotted his name on the chart at the bottom of his bed. As she picked up a mug from a bedside cabinet she said, ‘Thank you so much, Hamish. I really appreciate you marking my card. Now, one good turn deserves another and guess what? I’ve just found your teeth in this mug!’

  After helping Hamish retrieve his dentures, Madge turned to see if Dr Whittaker was still busy with a patient and decided that the reality was he probably knew far more up-to-date news than she did, because she hadn’t seen or read anything new since leaving London, and he was probably aware of that. He’s just trying to make me feel at home, she realised. Her mother’s letters had been filled with news of the family rather than details of the war effort.

  Ten minutes later Dr Whittaker returned and courteously invited Madge to join his 10.30 a.m. rounds so she could see for herself that the majority of the soldiers on this ward were suffering from diseases, not combat wounds. The biggest problems included malaria, dengue fever and dysentery. ‘You name it. We do our best to treat it here.’ Madge remembered the endlessly repetitive medical lectures on the Strathnaver and was going to have a bit of fun by adding sandfly fever, sleeping sickness, typhus and yellow fever, but wisely just nodded.

  Chittagong was less than fifty miles from the Burmese border so most of the VADs expected to have to deal with combat injuries. They hadn’t heard about the devastation that malaria had caused in the fighting that took place during the Japanese invasion of Malaysia and Burma. In fact, little was ever really heard or written about the heroics of what became known as the ‘Forgotten Army’. The truth was that malaria, of all the deadly diseases, came closest to undermining the Allied forces’ struggle for victory.

  That was until Lieutenant General William Slim, commander of the 14th Army, issued an edict in 1943 that swung the balance of power
within a remarkably short time. He reported that for every man evacuated with wounds there were 120 evacuated sick, usually with malaria. He pointed out that the annual rate of malaria was 84 per cent per annum of the total strength of his army and it was even higher amongst the forward troops. ‘A simple calculation showed me that in a matter of months at this rate my Army would have melted away.’

  Ironically mepacrine, the anti-malaria drug, was first synthesised in 1931 by scientists at Bayer in Nazi Germany. But there were rumours when it was given to troops in Slim’s 14th Army that it caused impotence, made teeth fall out and even resulted in baldness. The fact it also had a side effect that turned skin yellow didn’t help either and the result was that large numbers of troops did their best not to take the drug.

  General Slim brought in a system of random checks and if it was shown that less than 95 per cent of a unit had taken the absolutely foul-tasting mepacrine, he would dismiss the unit’s commanding officer. ‘I only had to sack three,’ he said. That certainly did the trick and infection rates fell dramatically. Another of General Slim’s edicts was that troops must not wash or bathe in the open after twilight when mosquitos were so active. Unfortunately he broke his own rules and rued the evening when he had a quick wash-down in the open and ended up in hospital in the spring of 1944 with malaria.

  As Madge followed the doctor on his rounds in the BOR ward they stopped at the bed of George, a farmhand with blond hair and a nose he broke after falling off a horse. He had been on the Indian subcontinent for less than six months and after religiously taking his mepacrine went out on his first jungle sortie full of optimism that whatever happened to him he was unlikely to catch malaria, the doctor explained. For just a split second a look of deep concern flickered across the face of the doctor who was doing his level best to lift the youngster’s spirits. George dripped with sweat and looked weary beyond his years. His face was that awful pasty yellow and he had just got over a bout of the shakes.

  ‘Nurse Graves, this looks like your first patient in India,’ said the doctor as he nodded to George and left to continue his rounds. It all seemed familiar to Madge, who moved almost instinctively to pick up a cool clean towel and used it to smooth that troubled brow. Her gentle smile had exactly the effect the doctor had hoped for and George seemed to relax and eventually drifted into a fitful, but nevertheless lengthy sleep. She used the time to familiarise herself with the modus operandi of the BOR ward, which she noted with some relief wasn’t that different from the system at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, but seemed far more relaxed. Despite being busy, she saw that the doctors and nurses smiled and joked with one another.

  It was late afternoon and close to the end of Madge’s first shift when she noticed that George seemed more alert than he had in the morning. When she went over to see how he was, he asked what her name was and clearly wanted to talk.

  ‘Please could I have a drink?’

  After she helped him sit up and quench his thirst, George poured his heart out. By now Madge should have long been off duty and would have loved to have had a relaxing pot of tea in the nurses’ mess, but most of all a shower. Instead she made sure he took his foul-tasting medicine, and was pleased to note that his morning temperature, which at one stage had reached a worrying 105 degrees Fahrenheit, had started to drop. So she listened.

  George told her his unit had been on patrol in the Arakan for a fortnight and it had rained almost constantly. Not just showers, but heavy, driving rain that left everybody absolutely soaking wet.

  ‘Instead of easing off, the rain became worse and the swarms of mosquitos became larger,’ he said. ‘At first I suffered from a minor headache or two. But then the headaches became more severe and I got chills, almost as if I had flu. Then I started being sick and got a dose of the shakes, but because I didn’t want to let anybody down I kept it all to myself,’ he said to Madge, who again wiped beads of sweat from his forehead.

  There was a lengthy pause before he explained how an experienced, older sergeant, who had seen it all before, spotted that there was a problem. And a serious one at that.

  In the months before General Slim issued the mepacrine edict the sergeant had been in a unit that had been virtually halved after suffering the same symptoms. He issued orders for the stricken youngster to be taken by stretcher to a casualty clearing station, where malaria was diagnosed.

  ‘I was flown on a DC-3 Dakota to Chittagong and then brought here by ambulance,’ he added.

  He told Madge that his biggest worry was not about malaria, but instead about not getting back with the boys. He missed his mum and dad, the farm and the dogs. He didn’t want to be a problem to anybody. He just wanted to do his duty for England and go home. When would he be able to leave hospital? When could he rejoin his unit? The morning bout of fever had drained his energy and when George once again drifted into a troubled sleep Madge lifted the sheets up over his shoulders and made sure he was securely tucked into bed. She ended her first day at 56 IGH feeling slightly anxious but not sure why.

  The calm, professional way she had handled George’s problems had been noticed by the doctor and within two weeks Madge was in charge of wards that cared for as many as thirty patients at a time. Her duties included giving the more incapacitated patients bed baths, taking temperatures, making sure medicine was taken, giving injections, administering the dreaded mepacrine, and making sure everybody got breakfast. A multitude of tasks that on the morning shift had to be completed in time for the doctor’s rounds, which got underway at 10.30 a.m.

  With virtually no nursing assistance available, Madge worried about her ability to help patients turn over to avoid bed sores until she realised that only on the very rarest of occasions would it be a problem. Most active patients did their utmost to help her move them anyway and were also so wracked by illness that they had lost huge amounts of weight.

  There was one thing that Madge always checked when she was running wards, either on the day or night shifts, and that was security. After the frightening incident at Stoke Mandeville’s kitchen she made sure she knew where help would be if problems developed. At 56 IGH there was always a fellow sister on the next ward, but most comforting of all was the fact that though they were rarely seen, Madge now knew the Gurkhas were always there, even on night shifts. Few were prepared to tangle with the infinitely courteous but utterly fearless little warriors from Nepal.

  After she had been at the hospital for ten days Madge was transferred to the dangerously ill (DI) ward to help her become familiar with all the problems that the hospital faced. At the end of one particularly tiring shift, during which the heat and humidity had been especially unpleasant, she bumped into Dr Whittaker who had been so helpful on her first day on duty.

  ‘How have your first couple of weeks at the hospital been?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘Good. I like the fact that we are getting as much experience as possible by working in all the wards. By the way, how is George, the lad who was struggling with malaria?’

  The doctor told her that a few days earlier George had complained about feeling cold in spite of a temperature reading of 105 degrees. That had been followed by a bout of the shakes so severe that the bed frame had banged repeatedly against the bamboo walls of the basha hospital. There were also spells of irrationality.

  He had been sick again and wasn’t eating, though he did manage to down a few spoonfuls of soup. Other soldiers in the ward had done their best to jolly him along, and repeatedly tried to cajole him into having a drink in an effort to combat the effects of dehydration from that high temperature. Later that night there was another bout of the shakes that became more and more severe.

  George became weaker and weaker. He never mentally gave up the fight to recover but sadly passed away. ‘For a number of reasons we think that he died from cerebral malaria,’ said the doctor.

  Madge, feeling sad at the news she had just received, slowly walked up the slope from the hospital to her basha and mulled over w
hat the doctor had said about the fevers, the nausea, the violent shakes, the high temperature but feeling cold, and that young George had died from cerebral malaria. Suddenly it all became clear as she remembered how her dad had suffered from shakes so violent that his metal bed had crashed against the bedroom wall. He’d always had a frighteningly hot forehead, and suffered from nausea, comas and irrationality. He had also served in India in the Great War. It all fell into place. Cerebral malaria had almost certainly killed him as well, not the constant bouts of flu the doctors had diagnosed.

  Madge felt a sharp pull in her stomach at the realisation. I’m too late to help my dad, but maybe being here I’ll be able to help others before it’s too late for them.

  12

  Learning About Indian Life

  The first shift on an Indian DI ward opened Madge’s eyes to the complications of nursing Hindu and Muslim patients on the same ward. Not only did they have separate kitchens and cooks of their own faith but they also insisted on having servants of the same faith to carry and serve the food, something the VADs were strictly forbidden to do. They had ward-boys to do this, and they also took the plates away. It was a major bonus because as a junior at Stoke Mandeville Madge remembered not only preparing breakfast, but then serving the meal – and collecting the dirty plates into the bargain.