大象传媒

I spent the early years of the war at Keycol Hill Hospital, Newington, near Sittingbourne in Kent. (I was seventeen when the war broke out in 1939.) Keycol Hill Hospital was divided into two parts - Isolation and a T.B. Sanatorium, which were administered separately by the Sittingbourne and Milton District and the Kent County Health Department. I worked on both the Isolation wards and the Sanatorium at various times but finished working there altogether after 1941. Each ward had a Sister and staff nurses, but the rest of the girls, like myself, were known as Probationers who had no formal training as Keycol Hill wasn鈥檛 a medical training school.

While I was there the Isolation wards were full of children with Scarlet Fever and other diseases. Banks of sandbags protected the windows. One night a nasty storm soaked these bags and caused some of the banks to collapse so that we were over-run with field mice. As fast as we chased them out there were more coming in. Luckily the children weren鈥檛 ill, as, after the first few days of fever, they were isolated for their infections. Can you imagine them jumping up and down in their beds having great fun? We needed the porters to come in with brooms to help us restore order.

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