大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Helen Oram, Scotland csv n behalf of Marion Soep and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Soep fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was a qualified nurse and midwife and had been living in South Africa when war broke out. I joined the reserves and was accepted for the regulars in the QAIMSN reserve. After a period at Aldershot I was posted to the tropics.

I went out to India in March 1942 to the Ninth Casualty Clearing Station. There were so many troops from all areas suffering from horrible injuries and tropical diseases and we had no equipment and no drugs with which to treat them. I ended up in Chittagong, working in an Army hospital with 100 beds, in huts and tents, for 1000 patients.

I went out on Hospital Ship Number 6, the "Melchior Treub". I was welcomed aboard. The Chief Officer was Bernard Soep, whom I later married. We took patients from Chittagong to Calcutta. As things got more difficult we had to take them to Madras. I was the Theatre Sister. I was horrified as we had no proper equipment. We had a surgical deck with metal cots. We had only a post-mortem table rather than a proper theatre table.

While onshore I met an official and we exchanged views. I told the surgeon about what I had been promised. The upshot was that we were told to go to a certain address and get the equipment we needed. No other hospital ship got as much. The Chief Officer was told to help me and we got our medical and surgical facilities fitted out.

I had eight Indian Ward boys, Hindustani speakers, who had been given a dispensation for the duration of the war. They were fantastic.

At the end of the war, we had an emergency in the operating theatre. We had a patient who had developed gas gangrene and his leg had to be amputated immediately. There was a bad storm. I sent a message to the Chief Officer asking for the ship to be steadied up for twenty minutes and the crew obliged. The patient needed a transfusion and the Chief officer was the right blood group.

Eventually the ship was damaged in a storm and I spent three weeks in the Himalayas. I contracted amoebic dysentery and then cholera on top of it.

After the war was over, one of the Queen Alexandra nurses had a baby, which I delivered.

My husband and I married after the war. During my time on the Hospital Ship, I kept diaries. I have written a book, "Our Sister Sahb" about my wartime experiences. It is due to be launched very soon.

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