大象传媒

NURSING IN CHINA

1. How I got there
In late 1943 after I had completed my SRN training, during which I had come into contact with members of the Friends` Ambulance Unit who had impressed me enormously, I volunteered to work abroad - hoping to go to the Middle East where my brother was serving. I was offered China and accepted.
After training in reading malarial slides, going to SOAS to learn Mandarin and Chinese etiquette - including the use of chopsticks - and various inoculations I sailed from the Clyde, bound first for Bombay. We were attacked off Algiers and, sadly, one of our accompanying aircraft was lost. From Bombay we crossed by train in two days to Calcutta and took a plane on April 15th 1944 to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province
The first stage of the journey was over the tea terraces of Northern Assam to Dinjan, a tiny refuelling airstrip in the middle of nowhere. A Japanese raid was thought possible at any time, despite their having been defeated with heavy losses about a month before at the battle of Imphal. Undetered, we had an al fresco meal of brown stew and tinned peaches, all served together on an enamel plate; they were the last tinned peaches I was to enjoy for a very long time.
We got back on board, slightly uneasy about what lay before us: the tough flight over the barrier ranges of Upper Burma, called lightheartedly the Hump. 18,000 feet up in an unpressurised aircraft
was alarming - but we were spared.
Which was just as well, because a momentous order had been given by Chiang Kai-shek the previous day to go ahead with the crossing of the Salween River, crucial in the campaign to push back the Japanese. In addition to being there in the hour of need we could also claim the distinction of being the first women to join the China operations of the FAU. There had been great contoversy about having women in the Unit, let alone in China - but there we were!
2. First impressions
As our plane descended to Kunming my foremost impression was of colour: rich, red earth, the brilliant green of the paddy fields, the stately rows of Lombardy poplars to ward off high winds and dust. Then the blue clothes of the peasants working in their fields, with their large straw hats shading and shielding them from hot sun and cold rain, and the demure black bonnets seemingly worn by all the gentle old ladies of 40 years or more. On closer inspection one could not fail to notice how often their clothing had been repaired and patched, and not a few went barefoot, unable to afford the customary straw sandals or canvas shoes. The only time we were to see beautifully embroidered silk gowns was on very special occasions like weddings.
After touch-down, several members of our team went off to temporary
headquarters to check in and attend to passport and other matters,
whilst a colleague and I stayed behind to keep an eye on our personal effects and equipment. A noisy crowd of coolies (a term now taboo)
3
soon collected, pushing and jostling each other, all wanting to be off and away with our luggage. This they carried suspended from a chan, a long pole rather like a European milkmaid`s yoke. I was told that a coolie`s life-span was, on average, about thirty years, not surprising given their hard labour and appalling living conditions. Malnutrition was one of the commonest medical problems we encountred, and often our first task was to treat both civilians and soldiers for deficiency diseases such as beriberi and scurvy. The daily diet of the ordinary soldier was boiled, unpolished, red rice with a few green vegetables and copious bowls of weak green tea. Meat, eggs, salt and protein in the form of milk and butter were for the most part a rare luxury, if not absent altogether. It was pointless to try to heal broken bones unless one saw that the patient was reasonably well fed. The soya bean was a life saver; our cook would make up large quantities of soya bean milk, of which each patient would receive a bowl daily.
3. On to Kutsing
After 24 hours in Kunming we travelled by rail north-eastwards to the town of Kutsing (now Qujing) where our regional headquarters were located. We spent six weeks there learning Chinese hospital methods and struggling with more Mandarin lessons so we could communicate in the field - simple questions such as, 鈥淲here is the pain?鈥� 鈥淗ave you a
headache?鈥�, just the basics for correct diagnosis aided by our own sight, sound and touch.
On May 22nd 1944, just seven days after my arrival in China, I was
called at 6am by the team leader who said that there had been a serious rail accident 60 kilometres away on the Yunnan-Szechwan railway. We were six: one doctor, four experienced first aiders and stretcher bearers, and me. It was a disaster area with the injured and dead scattered eveywhere after many coaches of a troop train had come off a viaduct and plunged 50 feet into the stream. The injured had to be given morphine and tetanus injections before we could begin to cope with their injuries. We wrote M and T on their foreheads as we administered the drugs. We managed to find shelter in some farm buildings so that we could begin to dress wounds and splint broken limbs.
My most vivid memory of the day was when I was sprinkling sulphonamide powder into the compound fracture of a soldier`s leg, kneeling over him in the farmyard. Just as I had finished, before I had time to cover it with a dressing prior to splinting it, a little black pig came rushing out of a sty and jumped over the leg. I sat back and roared with laughter - it was a moment of light relief. We worked solidly from 9 am until 6 in the evening, when the last of the bodies had been put into coffins and the worst of the wounded sent back by rail to the Chinese hospital in Kutsing; the rest, who could walk, were sent back by lorry. There were 59 killed and 66 injured. It was rather macabre
to see carpenters on one side of the embankment making coffins while we cared for the living on the other side.
Several weeks later, when the first pangs of grief had lessened, the
Railway officials and the Chinese Army representatives invited us to a banquet at which they expressed their gratitude for our help in many speeches in Chinese and French. The climax was the entry with a flourish of a huge platter bearing a delicious, large, golden carp, wonderfully cooked and wreathed in exquisite sauces and ginger.
4. On to Baoshan
After our six week acclimatisation and training period, I was asked to go to Baoshan where the Chinese Expeditionary Forces, having crossed the Salween River, were encountering fierce opposition from the Japanese. Severe casualties had been incurred.
The journey took ten days; I travelled by ambulance and truck through beautiful scenery but with a few scary times: the drivers were not of the best and prone to recklessness - they would 鈥渟queeze鈥� fuel in order to sell it on the black market and then coast down steep hills.
At Baoshan the hospital consisted of huts some 4 miles outside the town and our team lived in tents and one small, rat-ridden and lice-infested hut which was part of the pharmacy. It was made of bamboo with a thatched roof. The bamboo walls were covered with paper but there were lots of holes and we often had an audience when we were getting dressed! Before getting into bed, which consisted of boads with a paliasse and a sleeping bag, we would dust ourselves well with DDT powder and duck quickly under our mosquito nets, listening to the sounds of bullfrogs calling each other and a Yunnanese rat eating our precious English soap.
From June to October 1944, as the fighting continued, we had our hands full with the casualties pouring in. Many of the wounded had already had to wait several days before getting to a first aid post, and
from there had been carried by bamboo stretcher over mountainous terrain before continuing the journey by truck, so those who survived were often in a poor condition. They would be met by an admissions officer who would look for the three most serious types of wound: abdominal or head wounds and signs of severe haemorrhage. At the height of the fighting 50 to 100 soldiers might be admitted every 24 hours. The overflow would be placed on straw beds in the outer courtyard to await their turn. Our two surgeons operated from 9am until 11pm and were on call in the night.
I was asked to take charge of the 56-bed surgical ward in a large hut made of bamboo, with mud floor and thatched roof. The men, victims of war and maladies of the region such as malaria, relapsing fever, tetanus and the ever prevalent dysentry, would be stretched out on their beds of planks on trestles or bricks with a paliasse and a couple of blankets.
One day the Chinese Red Cross arrived with a large quantity of pyjamas. 鈥淗ow wonderful,鈥� we thought, 鈥渨e can give them a change of clothing and get their uniforms deloused and washed.鈥� No such luck! The men insisted that, once they`d put on the pyjamas, they must don their uniforms again lest they be stolen!
Our Team Leader, an American, was very wise. He allowed the
traditional healers to come into the wards provided they did not interfere with the dressings or worry the patients.
As I have already mentioned, our living conditions were not five star.
After washing for weeks with one bucket of water, my nursing colleague and I approached the Superintendent of the Army hospital to ask if there was any possibility of getting a bath. After many cups of tea and much polite conversation through our interpreter, he told us that he would lend us his bath. Several weeks later a day arrived when the kitchen boys heated up water which they then carried in buckets to our room. We speculated as to what sort of bath tub it would be - canvas? tin? Then a rumbling sound drew closer and a large wooden barrel was presented to us. We laughed so hard that we almost forgot to thank the men. We got it inside our room, removed the small toadstools from its depths, poured the water in and enjoyed our first real bath for several months, courtesy of the Colonel. It had to be a fast bath because the seams of the barrel were not sound!
Our personal finances may be of interest. We received no salary, only pocket money amounting to the equivalent of about 5/- a week. That gave my fellow nurse and me just enough for a mug of coffee and a Chinese moon cake once a week in a local restaurant (fan dian) - a real treat. Our basic needs like toothpaste were provided for us, as was our food.
5. Tengyueh
Meanwhile, on the Western side of the Salween River, the terrible struggle was continuing with a focus on capturing the town of Tengyueh, now Tenchong. Eventually, on September 14th, the
Japanese were finally put to flight. There was no civilian hospital there and several of our team were asked to go and start up medical services.
We hoped to go by air but had in the end to go by road, taking a very roundabout route because a bridge over the Salween was down.
The journey was not uneventful: at one point we drove through a battery of shell fire, witnessed US dive bombers attacking Japanese positions at Lungling and saw Chinese Coolies and American engineers working at a tremendous pace to get the road to Tengyueh usable. On the third day there was no transport available so we hired six coolies who in turn procured four thin, bony oxen - mules were at a premium - and on them loaded our x-ray equipment, generator and boxes of medical supplies, while we set off on foot for Tengyueh, said to be about 65 kilometres away. It was more a climb than a walk and we crossed a moutain range, the coolies all the while telling me it was a short cut! With us was Dr. Robert McClure, a remarkable China hand, who insisted that we lived like the Chinese, which meant a strict regimen of two meals a day, one at 11am, the other in the evening. However, on the fourth day, November 3rd 1944, as we slogged away on the road, Dr. Doug. Crawford and I got ahead of Bob and came to a little house where a few wizened pears were displayed for sale. With what guilty feelings did we buy and eat one each before our chief hove into sight!
We arrived at our destination that evening. The town presented an appalling sight. All but a few buildings had been razed to the ground. Ditches and wells were filled in and the bodies of men and mules were
lying in shallow graves. The public health tasks had to come first. But the population who had fled to the hills during the fighting was flooding back and on November 6th we opened our out-patients clinic in a shop with a house behind, under the floorboards of which we had found a live grenade and some Japanese postcards. We soon established another outpatients clinic in a disused Confucian temple and, after much refurbishment and help from Canada and Britain, it became the town`s hospital. The Chinese government also contributed one million Chinese dollars which I went to Baoshan - this time by air - to collect: I brought back two rucksacks stuffed with notes.
On December 18th an outbreak of bubonic plague was reported in a village some five kilometres away. The village was subject to a cordon sanitaire and we began an urgent round of immunisation with serum flown in from Chungking, the provincial capital. The town-crier would go round the streets with a gong telling the people where the foreign doctors were to be that day with their free medicine and the people came happily for their jabs - indeed, we had to be vigilant as some people wanted a second dose for good measure! Of course, we had to inject ourselves too.
By January 1945 the situation in Tengyueh had eased and I was able to leave to go to Basra, Iraq, where my husband-to-be, whom I had met on the voyage out, was working. I was happy to think that Tengyueh was now at peace and that the hospital was up and running; it was given the name of Tengyueh Peace Memorial Hospital and the FAU continued to staff it until the end of the war, when an American missionary group took it over.

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