大象传媒

I started my nursing training during the War in 1943 at the age of 20. I thought about applying to London but my mother discouraged that so I applied to Leicester which was a voluntary hospital, richly endowed and had a good reputation. I had to wait 8 months after applying to go there. The training lasted 4 years and if you broke your contract during that time you were fined.

I mostly nursed civilians but after the Normandy landings in 1944 we started to admit military patients into 3 or 4 special wards. Interestingly, the casualties could be in the hospital from the Front within 18 hours of being wounded. They were brought in by train and even if you were off duty you could still be woken up at 2am to help treat them. They had the most dreadful burns and we used to leave the end of the bed open because of the smell. When we opened the plaster we found maggots eating the detritus but we just closed the plaster up again to let the maggots finish the good work.

When new patients arrived we used to introduce them to the other patients in the ward. When we were doing our training, the Sister Tutors used to tell us to screen the bed (the screens were heavy and had to be carried from place to place) then tell the patient what we were going to do. I remember one occasion when there was just one civilian in amongst the mostly 20/30 year old cheeky soldiers. The civilian was elderly and deaf and when I shouted that he had to have an enema, the whole ward fell silent.

Another tragedy of the War was the number of 鈥渋ncomplete abortions鈥� after the GIs arrived. One whole ward was set aside for them, 24 hours a day.

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