大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site at Surrey History Centre on behalf of Mrs Joan Matthews. It has been added to the site with the author's permission, and she fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was a young 18-year-old nurse working in the Civil Nursing Reserve, at Botleys Park War Hospital, [now St Peter's Hospital] before D-Day. We had been nursing, mainly bomb victim wounds until then. The patients were suddenly all sent off to hospitals further into the country for safety. We sat for a week, in those empty wards, not quite certain of the coming events, rolling bandages, folding, preparing the wards, the beds, the operating theatre. Then came the invasion D-Day landings into France.

Two days later, we heard on the intercom in all the wards that a convoy of soldiers would arrive at Woking station within an hour. The boys arrived, still in their kaki uniforms, some walking, others on stretchers, with only their field dressings. The first task for us junior nurses was to put a cigarette in their mouths, write a note to their families and make them as comfortable as possible until the doctors came to assess the seriousness of their wounds. The doctors were operating in the theatre, also on the trolleys the boys had been carried in on. Some of the men were screaming with shell shock. One poor boy, I remember, thought he was still on the field, and was screaming that a German was in the tree above him... I was able to help in the theatre which I loved to do. One surgeon just asked me to put a leg he had just amputated into a bucket, a bit of a shock for a young inexperienced girl...

Eventually, the worst cases only were kept at Botleys until it was full, the minor injuries having been sent inland to other hospitals.

I loved the work. The soldiers called me 'Flash' as I walked quickly, did everything quickly, in fact, until the day, amidst hearty laughter from the beds, I slipped with a pile of those awful bed pans shaped like a frying pan...no sluices in those days... It all had to be emptied down the handle... Yuk...

Then came the night on night duty, when I was told I had to learn how to give injections. Every 4 hours they had penicillin [the wonder drug] into their buttocks which used to hurt them as the liquid went in. 2am...in fear and trembling I asked the nurse in charge 'What about Ashley?' - the boy in the second bed who just could not take these injections. She said 'Just push the needle in while he sleeps'...a bloodcurdling scream when I did this, and all the lights went on above the beds of the rest of the ward amidst laughter and cajoling as they waited their turn with this scared nervous nurse.

Eventually, I was put in charge of a ward, on the ramp, at night. The night sister came round around 10.30pm to inspect the wards. She always told me I had the quietist ward...I had stuffed pillows into some of the beds to look like sleeping soldiers. In fact they used to go to the local pub, on crutches, legs and arms amputated, dressed in their hospital blue, white shirts, red ties...all helping each other. A tap on the door at the end of the ward, and they all were quickly rushed and helped into bed. I can't remember questioning all of these escapades, but now I imagine they were being helped by the local people, as the pub was a mile away...

I always took a group of 6 of the walking wounded, on my day off, home with me, where my Mother had a good meal, to meet any of my sisters who were at home, to give them all a taste of home from home, after all they had been through.

I wondered through the years what had happened to some of those boys, how they managed their lives after their dreadful experiences.

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