We had the carriage to ourselves for all that remained of our meandering eight-hour journey from Warrior Square Station, St Leonards. We had been posted to a large military hospital in a permanent army camp near Salisbury Plain, but as our final approach was from the north-west, there was no sign of the Plain. The little train ambled across arable farmland, the spring ploughing had started, every field was thick with birds picking over the reddish-brown soil, every cottage and farm garden festooned with washing lines. The war seemed so alien that we wondered if the R.T.O. had sent us west by mistake until the train suddenly hiccuped to a stop in a tiny station and we found we had arrived.
Several soldiers got off with us and with no officer in sight to act as a deterrent our appearance evoked the immediate verbal barrage that we shortly learnt was the British army’s conditioned reflex to the sight of a uniformed nurse whatever her age, figure and face. From first to last year of the war, always in my experience, the barrage was good-humoured, even affectionate, and never impolite or sprinkled with the mildest epithets. ‘Oy, Charlie – over there – there’s the reason why I left home!’ ‘Oh, Nursie, I do feel queer – come and take me pulse, Nursie!’ ‘Oh, Nursie, me mother told me to find a girl like you – oh, Nursie, you’re smashing!’ Still bellowing they climbed into the back of a waiting van and were driven off chorusing a recently popular song that began: ‘Nursie, come over here and hold my hand…’
Being totally uninitiated it never occurred to us to expect official transport. The driver of the one taxi on the rank was a tall, straight man with cropped, white hair, a civilian suit neat enough for a uniform, and brilliantly polished shoes. ‘Military hospital, ladies? Oh dear me no, you don’t want the hospital. What you want is the Officers’ Club.’
‘But, driver, it says here—’
He checked our warrants. ‘No offence, ladies, but seeing as I’ve had the forty-two years’ service you’ll not mind my saying as you don’t want to set too much store by what it says there. There aren’t no nurses quartered up the hospital. What you want is the Officers’ Club. That’s where all you young Red Cross nursing ladies got your billets. I’ll see you’re all right.’
Once away from the station and over the crest of a hill, a harsh lined mosaic of red brick opened out below. Behind the red brick were low hills fringed with low trees and beyond were glimpses of an empty, undulating faded green carpet stretching to the eastern horizon. The driver jerked a thumb at a row of neat, glass-fronted wooden shacks at the foot of the hill. ‘The shops.’ Another thumb jerk. ‘Blocks start here. Just remember they’re all alphabetical and you’ll not get lost.’
Block after block of the same red brick built to the same pattern with the same white barrack squares, sentry boxes, khaki figures, all of the same sex. Men everywhere, marching, drilling, running, strolling, crawling on their stomachs, taking guns to pieces, loading larger guns on to carriers, driving cars, vans, lorries, tanks, motor-bikes and ambulances with large red crosses painted on their roofs and khaki sides. Our driver said the hospital had great red crosses painted on its flat roofs, ‘Could come in handy, but then – as you might say – could not.’
He turned the car away from the red brick and drove past tennis courts, playing fields, and a row of largish semi-detached houses with blank curtainless windows and neglected front gardens. ‘M.O.Q. – beg pardon, miss? Married Officers Quarters that’ll be, but empty now as all the officers’ ladies got moved out. Only ladies we got left in the camp now are the Sisters, you Red Cross ladies and the ATS. Not much more than the five hundred of you in all, they tell me. What’s that, miss? Well, now, hard to say how many of the lads – but I don’t reckon it’ll be less than the hundred thousand and could be more than a mite more.’
The road widened into a long avenue lined with leafless trees. The broad grass verges were thick with broken branches and logs. ‘Come down in last month’s cold snap, miss. Couldn’t drive down here for ’em falling. Had half a tree across the bonnet one night.’ He slowed into a short, gateless drive and drew up at the pillared porch littered with women’s bicycles. The bell did not work. The driver said not to worry as it had gone u/s since the ladies took over. He carried in our luggage, accepted the 1s. 6d. (7½p) fare but politely returned the tip as he said he never took more than the fare from nursing ladies. ‘You want to go on through those double doors and find one of your lady officers.’
The doors opened into a large dining-room furnished with scrubbed deal tables, benches, and a long serving counter. The only occupant, a girl in a white silk shirt, navy skirt and black silk stockings, was sitting by the log fire at the far end painting her nails with colourless varnish. She advanced spraying the air with the scent of pear-drops ‘Hallo! New girls! How’d you do? Terribly sorry, hands are wet – my half-day – just had to repair the damage after last night’s party. God what a party! Where are you from? SUSSEX? Why the hell’ve they sent you to Hampshire? We’ve no one from Sussex here – but Madam’ll know – she send someone to meet you? Oh – can’t have known you were coming. Not to worry. She’ll be back from the Office in a jiff. Come and sit down and get warm. Anything you want to know?’
I asked, ‘Are we allowed to wear black silk stockings?’
‘Not officially but most of our age do. Of course, Madam narks, but she has to nark being our Commandant – here she is.’
The small spruce BRCS Commandant strode in with a purposeful air and impressive line of First World War medal ribbons on the breast of her jacket. ‘New Members? Why wasn’t I informed?’ She studied our papers and National Identity Cards. (We were not issued with Army Books 64, or BRCS Identity Cards until some months later.) ‘I’ll hang on to these for the present, m’dears. They appear in order, but there must be some mistake. We never get Members from Sussex this far west.’ From her tone Sussex adjoined the Polish not the Hampshire border. ‘I’ll have a pow-wow at the Office. Probably find yourselves posted on in the morning – don’t unpack too much.’ She turned to a youngish, pretty woman with greying hair who had followed her in and wore an indoor uniform dress, black tie and belt, and no apron or cap. ‘Find these new gels beds for the night, m’dear. Andrews, E., Andrews, L., from Sussex! And this, new Members, is our invaluable Home VAD!’
Three years earlier Betty had started nursing in Guy’s Hospital, enjoyed the Preliminary Training-School but left at the end of her first month in the wards. ‘Kind of Home Sister,’ she translated privately. ‘School matron.’
The Home VAD led us away sadly muttering ‘Sussex’. In the stone-floored chilly storeroom still heady with wine fumes she explained what really worried her was German Measles. ‘Suppose you haven’t had it? You have! Both! Recently – oh, bless you! I can put you in infectious beds – or should it be contagious? I never knew – do you?’ We didn’t. ‘We’re having an epidemic’ She piled rough grey blankets and oblong bolsters seemingly stuffed with sand into our arms. ‘Those are pillows. Now, biscuits.’
‘Biscuits—?’
‘That’s what the army calls these.’ She slapped a stack of thin mattresses roughly two-foot square. ‘Did you bring sheets? Oh, dear. I’ll try and find you one each, but do write home for some and bikes if you’re going to stay. There’s no transport to the hospital, it’s over a mile away and once on the wards your feet won’t stand up to all the foot-slogging. Let’s find you beds.’
Just like being back at school. Betty, my senior, went into the senior dorm. – the former Bar now occupied by only fourteen beds. I went into the junior dorm. – the twenty-bedded former ballroom.
It was a room of lovely proportions. Three walls were lined with mirrors and, in the fourth, a row of giant French windows opened on to the garden path and two tennis courts directly beyond. From the high ceiling decorated with gold leaf, four massive glass chandeliers hung serenely over chaos. The twenty Army bedsteads and twenty wooden orange boxes that served as dressing-tables, bookshelves, lockers, larders and dirty linen closets were so arranged as to m
ake movement between the beds difficult and crossing the room in a straight line in any direction, impossible. Spare blankets, rugs, dirty caps, dirty aprons, cigarette ash, cosmetic jars, spilled face powder, half-eaten ginger-nuts, suitcases, portable wirelesses, tennis racquets and photographs of young men in uniform were strewn as by a hurricane.
The Home VAD sighed, ‘Sorry about the squalor. You won’t believe it, but this gets tidied everyday. Madam’ll raise the roof if she walks in now.’
I lacked the courage to say I liked the mess as it had caused the first real crack in my back-to-school armour. Supper, temporarily, repaired this.
‘I say, would you mind frightfully passing the salt? Thanks most awfully! … I say, aren’t you one of the new girls from somewhere too peculiar? Sussex? How quaint! I say, Mary, have you heard – the new girls are from Sussex!’
There were variations: instead of what Miss X said it was what Sister said; some of the faces round the tables were middle aged and pale with fatigue; and all the hands were red and roughened as all present were amateur nurses. (Professional nurses even in wartime, from their first day in P.T.S., were taught to care for their hands since cracked roughened skin more readily harboured germs.)
I was expecting a mistress to walk in and clap her hands, ‘Girls, please! Less noise!’, when the Commandant walked in and clapped her hands. She addressed us, invariably collectively, as ‘Members!’ Individually it was either ‘m’dear’ or by the surname and where necessary plus an identifying initial. It took me several days to identify myself as Andrews, L.
The Commandant announced the Company Office to be temporarily unable to explain the postings of the two new Members from Sussex, but owing to the Rubella stalking the camp – ‘German Measles’ murmured the girl beside me guessing, rightly, I had taken this for some form of Fifth Column – as the hospital was so short-staffed, Matron had decided to post Andrews, E. to A Block, Andrews, L. to Lower C for day-duty from tomorrow at 07.30 hours. Purely pro tem.
‘Your sister’s lucky,’ said my neighbour. ‘Acute surgical and real nursing. She had any training? Guy’s P.T.S.? No wonder.’
‘What’s mine?’
She grinned. ‘N.D.K. – No Diagnosis Known. Could be worse. Could be SKINS.’
She was a large friendly girl with the face of a cheerful horse but much better teeth. After supper she advised us to unpack properly. ‘War’ll be over before the bods in the Company Office have sorted out your posting.’
As far as I ever knew, she was right.
At some period, I think before the house became an Officer’s Club, a long conservatory had been added. By our arrival the glass had been painted black and a row of partitioned bathrooms installed, but as the partitions fell considerably short of the conservatory roof, conversations in any bathroom were audible to all. In the bath that night I heard another high-pitched ‘Too extraordinary, darling – I mean why Sussex here?’
Adrenalin and country pride rose together. I sang loudly the first verse of Sussex By The Sea, Betty in a neighbouring bath joined in and at the tops of our voices we repeated several times the chorus:
Good old Sussex by the sea, by the sea,
Good old Sussex by the sea,
You can tell them all that we stand or fall
For Sussex by the sea.
It could have been coincidence, but never again did I hear anyone express surprise at our coming from Sussex.
That night in the ballroom was hot and stuffy until the Commandant was judged safely in bed in her room at the opposite end of the house and someone illicitly opened the heavy shutters blacking out the french windows and left open two of the doors. It took me a long time to get to sleep as the hard biscuits kept slipping apart. I was asleep when something shook my bed. I was blinded by a torchlight and inhaled gin fumes. ‘Terribly sorry, darling – wrong bed. Mine’s next. Just back. God what a party!’ The torch went out.
‘For God’s sake shut up! Some of us’, hissed another voice ‘want to sleep.’
‘Sorry, darlings.’ Fumbling hands groped round my bed, knocked something off an orange box, then returned to shake my shoulder. ‘I say, you on in the morning? Give me a shake if I’m not awake as I’ve got to leave at seven to walk it as my bloody bike’s got two flats.’
In the dark I heard her throwing off clothes, the soft methodical clink-clink of a comb against metal curlers and fell asleep to the slap-slap of her patting cream on her face.
It seemed only five minutes later that a chandelier was switched on. It was 5.30 a.m. and the four VAD cooks sharing the room with sixteen nurses had to be on-duty at the hospital at six and were wearily climbing into uniform. Half an hour later all the chandeliers were on and everyone but the latecomer was awake. Each time I shook her, she grunted, ‘I want to die,’ and hauled the sheet higher over the small arms factory in her blonde hair. The other girls told me not to flap. ‘At five to seven she’ll explode into life, grab a bacon sandwich, eat it walking to the hospital and be on-duty in time.’
At exactly five to seven she erupted, flinging off bedclothes and pyjamas, flung on bra and pants, raced for the bathroom and on returning sat on the side of her bed, did her face and put on her cap before donning stockings, suspender-belt and uniform. I had already noticed most of the others got into uniform in that order and in a day or two and ever after did so myself. It was the quickest way of getting into uniform, as stockings could be hitched to back suspenders, dresses buttoned, apron bibs pinned en route to dining-room or ward, but a cap needed precision and a mirror.
Day-duty for VAD nurses began at 7.30 a.m., and ended at 8 p.m. During the day we had three hours off either from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.; 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.; or the most popular, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. We had one half-day a week and this was either a free morning to 1.30 p.m., or free afternoon from 2 p.m. Generally those who lived near enough to get home for the afternoon, chose or were given afternoon half-days, and those living too far off had the free mornings and glorious luxury of lying in bed watching the rest leave for work and sleeping on until noon. On days we had one day off per month. On night-duty, one free night awarded for every week worked, and these free nights had to be taken together at the end of the full night shift of twenty-eight nights. Night hours were from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. Our pay in 1940 was one pound per week.
The military hospital at first sight looked like the other barracks. According to the old soldiers, it had been used as barracks until converted into a hospital between the Boer and First World War. According to some of the Sisters – known as QAs – newly recruited from the great voluntary teaching hospitals – the conversion was more likely to have happened between the American War of Independence and the Crimean War. ‘Personally, I date it just after Agincourt.’
The harsh-lined ward blocks were ranged round a great square and the main entrance to square and hospital lay under a flat-roofed arch. Until the air raids started, every fine day the arch roof was lined with sick men in beds covered with scarlet blankets, or in wheelchairs with scarlet over their knees and the multi-coloured crochet shawls provided by the combined Red Cross and St John Ambulance Societies over their shoulders.
The blocks all had two floors, ground and upper, and the acute wards and operating theatres were on the latter. My first block was non-acute and from my first day onwards I knew it as the N.D.K. Block.
N.D.K. lay across the square from the arch and consisted of seven large ten-bedded barrack-room wards, three ablutions annexes, a minute scullery with a window overlooking the Ordnance railway line, and a vast reception room that served as Sister’s duty-room, M.O.’s office, surgical dressing-room and ward kitchen. At one end of the hall a door opened into the square, and at the other was the doorway to the first of the seven wards. ‘No bathrooms, no sterilizers – not even a fish-kettle on a primus.’ The block’s senior VAD ticked the missing objects off on her fingers. She had nursed as a VAD in France in the first war and wore her old and old-fashioned long-sleeved, dog-collared BRCS uniform.
‘So we sterilize by flaming. Quite simple. We use this huge enamel bowl, put in the instruments – so – pour on raw meths to cover – so – stand well back – back a bit more—’ she struck a match ‘and so!’
When the soaring blue flame subsided – ‘Excuse me, Mrs S, but does it work?’
‘Must do as we get very little cross infection. Of course, that could be the M. and B.’
‘I’m sorry, but – what’s that?’
‘M. and B. 693. Short for May and Baker, I think 693 because it took them 693 times to get the combination right. They’re tablets. Marvellous things. Don’t know how the stuff works, but we hand ’em out for everything from septic fingers to meningitis. The boys say it makes ’em feel like the Wrath of God, but whatever it does, does the trick. When I remember all the sepsis and gangrene we had last time — Oh Lord, mustn’t waffle as we’ve masses to do. But here’s something I must tell you about M. and B. – it clashes with onions and Epsom salts and then turns people blue. Don’t forget whenever you’re sent to dole out M. and B.s to ask if anyone’s eaten onions or Epsom salts that day and if so tell Sister on the double.’
That warning worried me for months and any of my patients on M. and B. 693, I daily badgered, ‘You’re positive you haven’t eaten onions or Epsom salts?’ ‘Not me, miss! Cross me heart and hope to die!’ But having discovered that soldier-patients were bound to admit only what they thought I wanted to hear, I watched covertly, anxiously, for signs of their turning blue. I never saw this happen.
The wards had white-quilted beds, white deal open lockers, and a few hard chairs. Beds and lockers had to be arranged in the approved military order, chairs to stand in fixed places against the walls, the patients’ greatcoats and caps had to hang from the brass hook on the wall just above each bedhead, the greatcoats in the approved folds, the cap arranged to show clearly the cap badge. The only soldiers I knew to object to the last were the sick military policemen who used to remove the outer red covers from their caps within minutes of admission. In the acute blocks the patients were issued with pyjamas or hospital nightgowns. In N.D.K. (an Other Ranks Block) any bed-patients then wore the white shirts issued with Hospital ‘blues’. These much-washed and stoved bright blue woollen jackets and trousers tended to be ill-fitting and crumpled unless worn by up-patients in the Brigade of Guards. I never nursed a Guardsman up-patient who did not remove the creases from his blues jacket and put them correctly in the trousers, by flattening both under his mattress every night.
No Time For Romance Page 6