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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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A Nurse in the Merchant Navy Bringing Back POWs from Japan

by royalstarandgarter

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Contributed by听
royalstarandgarter
People in story:听
Derek Traylen
Location of story:听
England, Middle East, Japan
Background to story:听
Army
Article ID:听
A7010830
Contributed on:听
16 November 2005

This story has been added to the People's War Site by Margaret Walsh of the Royal Star and Garter Home on behalf of Derek Traylen and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I volunteered in 1944 at the age of 17. I was in the Royal Army Medical Corps at Cambridge Hospital in Aldershot. I did three years in all with the Medical Corps. Because I got high marks, I was transferred from the Army to the Merchant Navy, into the medical trooping pool. I was on troop ships, and had one trip on the Queen Mary, then three weeks on a ferry going from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. I was a nurse on nights. I then went to the Middle East on the Staffordshire and on the Empire Windrush.
Three months after the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I was sent there to bring back the prisoners of war. We went by ship, and the p.o.w.s were all flown home by Sunderland Flying Boat, which took 10 days. The doctors and nurses got mild radiation sickness from picking up contaminated window frames. It was like gastro-enteritis. Then someone got a geiger-counter and we knew we had radiation sickness.

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