Some Sunny Day

by Madge Lambert

  The setting was almost perfect for a Mills and Boon farewell – except for two things. The first was that the Gurkha guards were scrutinising their every move from the other side of the barrier. The second was that the shoulders and backs of both Madge and Basil were as red as the sunset had been, and infinitely painful.

  The farewell on the eve of Basil’s seaborne departure to Rangoon was always going to be emotionally painful, but combined with the burning agony of sunburn, their final, loving embrace was overwhelmingly tender, to say the least. Basil was in such severe pain that he almost forgot to give Madge the elegant jade bracelet that he had bought her as a farewell present.

  ‘My greatest worry,’ said Madge, ‘is that I’ll never see you again.’

  ‘Don’t think that way,’ said Basil. ‘This war will end sometime, hopefully sooner rather than later, and then we’ll be able to pick up just where we left off.’

  Madge could only hope with all her heart that he was right.

  The following morning Madge was in such pain that she took a roll of lint and cut two holes for her arms to go through, fashioning herself a kind of soft bodice that marginally eased the pain of those sunburned shoulders and back rubbing against her nurse’s uniform.

  The emotional pain of her separation from Basil, however, was simply unbearable and she yearned to be back with the man she knew was equally heartbroken.

  In fact, Basil had been so severely sunburned that on the first day of the three-day journey by sea he was bed-bound. On the second day there was a knock at the door and he was told that the captain of the rust-bucket of an old freighter that was carrying the Movements unit down the coast of Burma had a very important announcement to make and wanted everybody on deck without delay. For the life of him, Basil couldn’t think what it would be as he gingerly pulled a shirt on over his blistered shoulders before going up. The captain stood in the middle of a large group and spoke through a loudhailer when he said that the information he had received in a radio transmission had been verified by two other sources. The announcement was short, sharp and greeted with an enormous cheer.

  ‘The Germans have surrendered!’

  Within seconds the deck was alive with men jumping up, yelling question after question, shaking hands and slapping one another on the back. When Basil got a full-blooded smack on his shoulders, the pain almost took his breath away but he wasn’t going to miss this for the world and joined in a somewhat off-key version of ‘God Save the King’ with enormous gusto.

  At the celebration party on board in the afternoon Basil put on the bravest of faces, but the pain of his blistered shoulders became so intense he left the fray after an hour and retired to his cabin. Later that evening when things began to calm down he wished fervently that he had been with Madge when the wonderful news was announced.

  The converted freighter carrying Basil and the Movements units finally sailed up the Irrawaddy River, which had been heavily mined by the Japanese but swept clear within days of the Allies taking over. Enormous numbers of troops with tons of food and supplies were arriving into Rangoon docks. Lieutenant General Hyotaro Kimura, the Japanese Commander-in-Chief in Rangoon, having been instructed to defend the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese army to the death, simply abandoned Burma’s capital. Before they fled the Japanese systematically demolished a convent that they were using as a hospital, resulting in the death of almost four hundred of their own soldiers. In addition, Rangoon’s main jail was burned to the ground. Once the Japanese left, Rangoon suffered widespread looting and vigilantes ran amok while heavily armed robbers caused terror in the suburbs. Units of the 26th Indian Division along with British troops were seconded to police the city.

  The Japanese were being systematically driven back towards the Thai border supply lines. Basil’s next few months would be a furiously busy period. Every day he would make a round journey of almost a hundred miles from Rangoon to Pegu in his army jeep to a barren area of land with only a pebble track leading to the vital trans-shipment zone. It was from Pegu that Basil and the Troop Movement unit organised the transfer of thousands of tons of equipment, ammunition, food and troops to the front line.

  The big worry is not the Japanese, Basil wrote in a letter to Madge, it’s the thought of letting the troops down if things go wrong. That is what plays on all our minds every moment of every day.

  Madge felt tears come into her eyes at the thought of the weight of responsibility on other Allied unit’s shoulders, and gave a silent prayer that he would return safely to her.

  23

  The Casualty Clearing Station

  Back in Chittagong, 56 IGH heard about the end of the war in Europe a day after Basil. Madge celebrated in a very crowded nurses’ mess where Matron Olive Ferguson had gathered doctors and medical staff to raise a toast to victory. Sister Blossom was doing a sterling job of making sure every glass was full of good cheer. Unfortunately it was nothing stronger than fresh orange juice and not the pints of Newcastle Brown Ale that Vera had demanded because it was such a special occasion. Madge’s first thought when she heard the news was to hope Basil’s blistered shoulders were on the way to recovery so he would be well enough to join in the celebrations.

  She wondered exactly when Mum and her sisters would finally be able to return to Dover, and kept her fingers crossed that in spite of all the reassurances this was not just another groundless rumour. Happily, radio reports that had previously been heavily censored began to reveal details of the unconditional surrender. Apparently, London had celebrated through the night and Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that there was ‘no greater day in the history of our country’. The royal family had made no fewer than five appearances on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in response to huge crowds gathered in the Mall. The report drew to a close by saying that for the first time in six years searchlights illuminated St Paul’s Cathedral.

  In spite of VE Day, vicious fighting was still taking place in Burma and the nursing staff at 56 IGH were warned to be extra careful in Chittagong where another ‘Jai Hind’ rally in support of home rule for India was scheduled. For Madge, however, there was a more immediate problem because she was due back for duty on the Japanese POW casualty ward and had been made aware that the atmosphere had become increasingly unpleasant. She was told that many of the POWs were squabbling among themselves.

  The surgical masks and tight-fitting caps the girls wore made spitting at the nurses harder for the Japanese, but they continued nonetheless. In spite of trying to block all medical treatment they still continued to eat and drink, however. Not a single case of a POW going on hunger strike was recorded in the war diary of 56 IGH. The British guards were starting to lose patience, despite the threat of a court martial, and began to make their feelings known. The key was to follow orders and not physically touch the POWs so, as had happened on Madge’s first shift with the Japanese prisoners, bed legs were kicked when they misbehaved. A senior Japanese officer became so disgusted by the POWs’ behaviour that he held talks with the worst offenders in a bid to end the continuing abuse of the nurses. Fortunately, guards were on hand to save him from serious injury when a furious row broke out and several POWs trapped the officer in a corner.

  The day after VE Day, Madge had a fractious and somewhat tiring shift. The humidity was particularly unpleasant and as she sterilised wounds and administered injections, she could only wish that the Allied POWs were being treated the same way by the enemy.

  The Japanese officer hobbled over and surprised her when he said, in passable English, that he had told the soldiers they should appreciate the nurses instead of behaving the way they were doing, but his mission had failed. It was the first conversation Madge had had with any of the Japanese POWs and while there clearly was no apology forthcoming, the sentiment reassured her that her work was necessary and right.

  A few days later, there was a call for nurses to staff a casualty clearing station (CCS) that was to be set up in the hills east of the port of Maungdaw nea
r the Arakan area just south of Chittagong. Madge was one of six who volunteered. The Arakan was one of the most bitterly fought over areas in the Burma Campaign and for medical staff it was a very dangerous place indeed. The previous year during the Battle of the Admin Box a field hospital operated by the Royal Medical Corps and the Indian Medical Service had been overrun by Japanese, who were looking for medical supplies. During that search they bayoneted bed-bound patients and shot a Red Cross doctor, all in their quest to steal morphine and quinine, and even cotton wool. Indian soldiers who survived being shot were told that the Japanese aim was to be in control of Chittagong within two months. The slaughter of doctors and helpless patients continued and when the Japanese were finally forced out of the hospital complex the bayoneted patients and thirty other bodies were discovered.

  Madge was told, along with five other VADs including Vera and Phyl, that they would spend more than a month in the Arakan jungle during which time they would be living in tents. It was unlikely there would be running water and the nurses would be expected to be on duty from the moment they awoke to the time they fell asleep. There certainly wasn’t much sleep on the journey by road and track down the coast from Chittagong to Cox’s Bazar, a strategically vital port on the Bay of Bengal. At least this will be good preparation for when we arrive, thought Madge on the arduous journey.

  On the day before the group were due to leave Madge had a wonderful surprise when a letter from Basil arrived. The letter was deliberately upbeat, filled with stories designed to make her smile. It was obvious from the way he signed the note ‘your loving Basil’ that he still felt just as strongly about her as she did about him, and just that knowledge helped to lift her from the sadness she felt at being apart from him.

  The distance from Chittagong to Cox’s Bazar was little more than a hundred miles but for the nurses travelling in the rear of the battered old green army ambulance it turned into a bone-shaking nightmare that seemed to take hours. The constant rainstorms turned the roads to quagmires and Madge was grateful for the kindness of the Ghanaian driver, who went out of his way to make the trip as bearable as possible. Awooner was a member of the Royal West Africa Frontier Force that fought with such distinction in the Burma Campaign and he was an expert at manoeuvring the rickety old vehicle through floods and round deep and dangerous potholes.

  ‘Don’t you ladies worry yourselves,’ he told them as they each gripped their seats as hard as they could. ‘Back in Ghana the roads are always like this when the rains come. It’s no problem to me!’

  He always had a smile and went out of his way to make things as comfortable as possible for the girls, which helped to put them all at ease.

  If they thought that leg of the journey was bad, the drive into the hills after a two-day stopover in Cox’s Bazar was terrifying. They spent several hours driving on what were little more than jungle tracks before they reached the CCS. Once the group had settled in to the tented accommodation that would be home for several weeks a very welcome late evening meal was served.

  ‘I thought we would at least have our own tents,’ said Madge. ‘But I suppose it’s quite nice to be back together again under one roof. Even if it is only canvas!’

  The nurses were all so dog-tired when they eventually got into their camp beds that they slept like logs, but they got a big surprise when they woke just before dawn. There had been another heavy and prolonged rainstorm during the night and a bubbling, gurgling stream was flowing right through the middle of their tent!

  ‘Oh look, we have running water!’ joked Madge.

  Luckily, due to the tarantulas, poisonous spiders, leaches and other creepy crawlies that were inclined to pop into the CCS tents, the camp beds were high off the ground so nothing of importance was damaged.

  Later that morning their tent was moved away from the stream that was still happily flowing from a crevice further up the hill. What really surprised the newly arrived group of VADs was the size of the camp that was camouflaged and neatly tucked away at the bottom of a lush green valley. Birds fluttered in and out of the trees that grew on the slopes and pretty little flowers sprouted alongside thick, spiked bushes that surrounded the camp.

  A main tent acted as an operating theatre and makeshift casualty ward, and then there was a kitchen, a separate toilet and a makeshift shower hidden behind a tarpaulin that the soldiers had rigged up. That was about it, so far as Madge could see. She was told that there were always troops on guard, but those boys must have slept elsewhere because there were no more tents in sight.

  The staff at the camp more than welcomed the young nurses because the first thing that Phyl did when she saw the kitchen facilities and sacks of potatoes was to teach the cooks how to make ‘very passable’ chips.

  Wisps of mist rose as the morning sun broke through to turn the valley into a scene of such beauty that it came as quite a shock when the peace was shattered by the rumble of thunder.

  ‘Does this thunder mean we’re in for another of those heavy downpours?’ Madge asked a guard after another loud and prolonged burst.

  He shook his head and smiled gently. ‘That noise wasn’t thunder, miss. It’s our artillery giving the Japanese their early morning wake-up call,’ he said.

  That will teach you to ask silly questions, Madge said to herself, and try as she might, she found it difficult to balance the Arakan’s forested glory with the utter brutality that was taking place just a few miles away.

  Madge had spent the early part of the day in the operating theatre, where it had been a surprisingly quiet start. Most of the ‘repair work’ took place on men who had been brought in overnight with shrapnel damage suffered in a twilight confrontation with a Japanese raiding party. Casualty clearing meant exactly what it said. Doctors had to decide whether the injured soldiers could be patched up and returned to their units, or if they needed specialised treatment, in which case they would then be stretchered to the nearest air strip and flown to Chittagong or Calcutta. Only rarely did wounded troops stay for more than a couple of days and if that did happen, it was usually to get them fit enough to travel on to more sophisticated medical facilities. Thankfully, there was no shortage of medicine at this stage of the war because everything was supplied by air. The team were free to carry out blood transfusions, minor operations, stitch wounds and treat soldiers for everything from malaria to typhoid as well as dysentery and beriberi. They even had to sort out one poor young lad who had been bitten by a snake.

  His pal who had brought him in to the station kept on teasing him that he was going to die in minutes.

  ‘Just you leave him alone,’ Madge said jokingly, aware that in a bizarre way his friend was trying to keep his spirits up. ‘Don’t you worry,’ she said, turning to the lad who had been bitten, ‘it wasn’t one of those really poisonous ones they have around here so I’d say you’re actually pretty lucky. You’ll be fine in no time.’

  The state of some of the boys when they first came in was often very worrying because they arrived with literally nothing and Madge had to clean the soldiers up, find out what the injury was and get them to theatre as quickly as possible. As warned, the nurses worked round the clock until they were told to get some sleep. It wasn’t unusual to be called to deal with the wounded at 3 a.m. and no matter how badly injured or sick they were there was always a ‘thank you’ after dressing even the nastiest of injuries.

  After one particularly gruelling day at the CCS, as she tucked herself up in her rather uncomfortable camp bed, Madge thought to herself, It really is a case of all work and no play here. They weren’t wrong when they told us to expect to have to work our socks off. There was the odd moment of fun and teasing at meal times, but there was not even the hint of a social life. When they weren’t nursing the girls tried as much as possible to catch up on their sleep. And they certainly didn’t get any mail, which would have helped to raise their spirits.

  Madge was shocked early one afternoon, about halfway through their six-week stint at the CCS, when s
he heard two explosions that seemed alarmingly close. There was no way of finding out what was happening because she was in the middle of treating a soldier who had been shot in the thigh. An hour later she looked out of the tent to see two of the guards being cheered as they walked up the valley with several big, fat, juicy fish. They had thrown grenades into a deep stream in the next valley. She couldn’t believe the size of the haul!

  ‘One of our nurses has taught the boys in the kitchens how to make chips,’ she told the wounded soldier, who could see the guards through the flaps of the tent. ‘It looks to me as if there could be a treat on the menu,’ she added. ‘Good old-fashioned English fish and chips!’ That seemed to bring a smile to the soldier’s face despite the pain he must have been in.

  The troops, out of gratitude for what the nurses were doing for them, told the girls they would be first in the queue for dinner that night before the inevitable blizzard of requests for the delicacy flew in. Madge and every other nurse, however, turned down the offer of fish and chips deep in the Burmese jungle that night so wounded troops could enjoy a little treat that would remind them of home.

  The following morning, instead of the usual thunderous Allied artillery there was prolonged small-arms fire. It was a sign that the fighting was closer but Madge and Vera had no time to think about what was happening around them. They were kept busy dressing wounds of men who had been brought in at dawn on makeshift stretchers which had been hacked into shape from boughs that had fallen from trees. Two others had carved themselves such ornate walking sticks they took them back to the front line with them after their bullet wounds were patched up. The noise subsided around noon and the majority of the walking wounded had been treated and wasted no time in bravely returning to the conflict.