大象传媒

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From 1939-42 I trained to qualify as a sick children鈥檚 nurse and in 1943 was directed to University College Hospital (UCH) in London to work and study for the general nursing qualification. In May 1944 Matron summoned a small group of us, 鈥測ou are soon to be sent somewhere secret and possibly dangerous, you are not even to tell your families, just have a bag packed鈥�. Not until 5th June did anything happen: a coach suddenly arrived to fetch us and we set off for the unknown. After some hours we came to the brow of a hill, there below us we recognised Portsmouth and, in the distance, the Isle of Wight. Most amazing was that the sea between them had almost disappeared under a myriad of closely anchored ships, many with a barrage balloon floating overhead.

Our destination proved to be the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Cosham, where staff were busy evacuating all the patients to safe areas. Though we did not seem expected, we were soon put to cleaning the empty wards and making up beds. While doing so the next day, we heard that the long-awaited D-Day had arrived. Soon the first casualties, Allied and German, were brought in from the Normandy beaches on open landing craft. Our job was to patch up the wounded, to change dressings, give drugs 鈥� including the newly discovered penicillin which saved many 鈥� to remove shrapnel with tweezers, to wash and feed the wounded and, above all, to see they got some sleep. We knew that, to make room for a new lot, most would have to be sent away the next day by ambulance and train to hospitals further north. We were only allowed to keep the most seriously wounded. How brave and uncomplaining the soldiers were! The German wounded were, with one arrogant exception, most grateful for our care.

Eventually field hospitals were set up in France and we could return to UCH in London, just in time to care for civilian casualties caused by a new type of bombing, first by the V1 鈥榙oodlebugs鈥� and later by the even more devastating V2s. Duty in UCH鈥檚 top-floor operating-theatre with its enormous windows came to be dreaded by us all.

When the war in Europe ended, trained nurses were given some freedom of choice. I had one trip on a ship escorting Forces wives and families to join husbands in Germany. Later I worked as a matron of a day-nursery for fifty children under the age of five whose mothers were working in industry.

My fianc茅, who had joined up from Chile where he was working, was demobbed there by troop ship. I later went out to join him on a small cargo boat. On our planned wedding-day in Chile, our boat was held up in Colombia by a revolution. But I did get there in the end!

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