大象传媒

I started to do orthopaedic nursing in 1939 when I was sixteen, as I was not old enough to do my general nursing training. I was based at The Royal Cripples Hospital, in Birmingham. Some of my patients were evacuees from a Belgian hospital, who could speak no English. As they had T.B of the spine or hips they were immobilised on plaster casts to rest their backs. The heavy beds were pushed outside on the veranda, every day no matter what the weather. The view of the garden was obscured by a wall of sandbags.

The war went on and on and by the following winter the day staff were sleeping on makeshift beds in the cellar. One night we were woken up by a loud switching sound that seemed to go on for ever, as for a split second we waited for the inevitable explosion, like listening to a giant firework falling to earth with a bang. We rushed to go on duty wearing full uniforms stiff starched cap, collars, cuffs and all!

The shattered glass from the windows in our wards, was everywhere, covering the poor trapped patients. Later on I looked back in sorrow at the callous way we treated those patients, there was no thought of counselling in those days. We just got on with making everything the same as it had been before.

But it could never be the same again. It seemed that a stray German bomber after fulfilling his mission in the centre of Birmingham probably released his remaining bomb onto our hospital tower, killing the two night sisters.

Eventually, when I was eighteen I trained as a nurse at Guys' Hospital in London, just in time to experience nursing patients, some of whom died, who had been injured by the 'doodle bugs' and rockets, but thats another story.

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