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I was twenty years old when, having completed my training as a medical nurse (i.e. treating disease and illness, rather than physical injury) at St Stephen’s Hospital in London earlier in the year, I was sent to Joyce Green Hospital at Dartford in time to receive some of the wounded from the Dunkirk evacuation in June 1940.

We were one of several in the area taking in evacuees and were roused from our beds at two o’clock in the morning to begin what turned out to be a fifteen hour shift. We identified the worst cases, and made them as comfortable as possible in bed, and gave them something to drink. The wounded ranged from men with broken arms in splints, to those with shrapnel embedded in their spines and heads. The doctors were so busy that on several occasions I found myself having to dig out shrapnel embedded in patients’ heads, and stitch them back up, a procedure outside my training. But you just got on with it and did the best you could. There was no time to reflect on the horrors of war, you simply kept your professional head on, no matter how distressing your patients’ suffering.

My most vivid recollection is of those who had developed gangrene. A lot of the evacuees had tourniquets on that hadn’t been released for ages and ages. Obviously, there was a lack of trained medical personnel present during the flight across the Channel, and tourniquets hadn’t been loosened every so often to allow the blood to flow through before re-tightening them. As a result, many of the wounded had developed gangrene and our surgeons had to perform about thirty amputations in just two days.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by volunteer Steve Gothard on behalf of Peggy Priestman, and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Priestman fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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