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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Jessie Hall, and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Nursing in a convalescent home for servicemen

By
Jessie Hall

When the war broke out, I was in the St. John Ambulance Brigade. My call up was to be sent to a place called Nun Monkton priory, which was and still is in the village on Nun Monkton, which is between Harrogate and York.

The staff was made up of St. John Ambulance Brigade and the Red Cross. The Matron and Sister were hospital staff. For the Red Cross, Miss Warmold was the quarter master and for the St. John Ambulance it was Miss Barlow who was the Commandant. There was also a corporal and a P.T. Sergeant who where army personnel.

The army personal had their quarters up in the attic in the priory itself. The senior staff were downstairs in the priory and we nurses stayed in the cottages. The Priory was quite big; it housed 50 Servicemen, many from the Nabum Hospital in York.

After I had been at the priory for about one month, Nurse Brown and I were sent on a refresher course at the York Country Hospital for two weeks. While we were there we stayed in a vicarage; we had to sleep in the attic which was rather scary, as on a couple of occasions the sirens sounded.

I remember I was on duty one afternoon when a new intake was due. I got rather a shock on opening the door to be faced with twenty or more black faces, and in the centre was one white face - he was the driver. The soldiers had arrived in this country from Jamaica in the winter and promptly went down with flu. There was not a lot of actual nursing, but more giving medicines and dressings, but we did have other jobs to do.

We nurses sometimes let the men borrow our bikes to go into York. On one of the occasions, when we were looking out for them to return, three of them were weaving from side to side on the bikes. It looked obvious that they had had a drop too much to drink.

On one occasion we had a garden party, with different stands. One was a coconut shy with heads of Hitler and Mussolini. After the party was over, some of the men then dressed one head in a pair of pyjamas, stuffed the legs in a pair of boots, then sat them on a chair at the bottom of one of the men's beds, with the hands laid on the lap with a book. They were hoping that I would jump when I made my night round, but I was half warned what was in store for me. But I must say it looked very real.

Over the years I was stationed there, we had some happy times with all the men going back to their units, as we did not lose any to death.
I enjoyed my time at Nun Monkton Priory, we had good food even though we had rations the same as everyone else. The Priory was roughly about two and a half miles from the main road, so it paid to have a bike, so that on your day off, you were able to get to the main road to catch a bus into York, or in my case to Harrogate.

Pr-BR

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