大象传媒

Judy Naylor remembers her nursing experiences in London and Burma.
This story was contributed to a volunteer story gatherer at the Border Regiment Museum.
I went out in the QAs to India in 43, out to Bombay then to Secondabad near Hydrabad city. We opened up a new thousand bed hospital it was an old army fort ten huge barracks with a hundred beds in each, 128 IBGH and also 126, mostly medical, malaria and dysentery.

Convoys came down from the Burma front. It took two days by train, men with field dressings on, they were exhausted by the time they arrived, most of them recovered.
Two, I remember specially; Corporal Lamb, he had an arm injury he made me a lovely tray as a wedding present and one other chap who I especially remember, Geoff, tall, handsome, red haired boy, blue eyes, 21, with a wife and baby at home. He lost both legs above the knee from a landmine; he was the bravest person I ever knew. We never discussed the war or their rank, some were ambulant and some were bed patients, a few died but not as many as you would think, we had no penicillin, no antibiotics.
My best friend was the theatre sister Elizabeth Darley, she was worried because the means of sterilising the dressings was very poor. She mentioned this in a letter to her father in England, it was censored she was nearly court-martialled but it was true and she just said it
The men were marvellous.
Their great high spot in the war was Housey Housey, bingo. We used to sit and do it with them, they never discussed the war or their regiments or where they had been it was usually the people at home they talked about.
I then worked in a TB hospital in India most of the men that came out were seriously ill with TB when they landed. They had to use a hospital ship only for TB patients. That had been sunk so they used Nissan huts.
Patients were stuck in Nissan huts; it was the worst conditions for TB. There was a nice sergeant his passion was Shakespeare he longed for a copy. I scoured Poona city and I found the only copy an old one, he was so thrilled with it. He started a magazine for the ward called the Bacilli, a news magazine they worked so hard and they were so cheerful it was really wonderful.
The work of the Orderlies.
In the army QAs are all trained sisters and then you have orderlies who were like probationers in hospital, they were mostly men who had been called up they were C3 not A1. They were not young in their thirties and forties, business men and shop keepers.
They had to do nearly all the hard work , there were only about two sisters a ward the orderlies were used as junior nurses. If you were in the RAMC,if you were a Doctor you couldn鈥檛 get promotion at the very highest they would get to sergeant, they worked so hard and they were so kind and loving to all the patients

When I joined we were still wearing Scarlet and white uniform very nice a white dress with a tan and red epaulettes, it was very glamorous.
I met my husband out there, one day on a tennis court in Madras he was an ordnance officer security mostly, on munitions dumps. I played with him as his tennis partner he asked me out on a picnic supper and we got engaged then and there. I only saw him very rarely because he was on the other side of the country up near Calcutta
I started nursing when I was 17 and did two years on a children鈥檚 TB ward, 5 years at the Middlesex.
I joined the army because there was more chance to travel. You went where you could do the most good. In London the hospital was bombed. Often the people in London were more at risk than we were in India.
Our pay was really poor, 120 pounds per year and we had to pay mess bills out of that, when I was nursing in London it was 18 pounds per year.

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