Nursing 1939 -1945 Chapter 5

By the spring of 1944, when everyone was wondering if there would ever be an end of bombs and blackouts, rationing and general austerity, there was a feeling in the air, even in the hospital, that things were about to change. The second front, the invasion of Europe., was at last going to happen. Towards the end of May, Matron sent for a group of us and asked if we would volunteer to go to a secret location and work with the Army. Twelve of us agreed, imagining the excitement of being sent to France. We had a day or two to get cases packed and see our parents. Matron saw us off to the railway station and said our families would be told where we were “if necessary”. We were so brainwashed by slogans about “Careless talk costs lives” and “Walls have ears”, that we saw nothing strange in all the secrecy.

We seemed to be the only civilians at the station, which was seething with troops and we had a long wait before we were shepherded onto a train by the Stationmaster. There were no empty carriages so we were pit into the guard’s van where we sat on piled-up kitbags surrounded by the Army and with the air blue with cigarette smoke. As part of security regulations, there were no names on most of the stations we passed through, but we soon knew we were on the London line. At a small halt near Colchester, we were transferred to an ancient bus and set off down side roads; any main roads we saw were solid with army vehicles. Before long we had glimpses of cranes and derricks and shipping, which was exciting, and even the sight of a sign saying Tilbury Seaman’s Hospital didn’t dampen our spirits, as we realised we couldn’t go to France until the invasion had actually started.

The hospital was close to the docks and had been emptied of patients and the staff had been reinforced by several RAMC personnel. We were given rooms in the nurses’ homes which was somewhat overcrowded. Each day, we had a practice with RAMC on admitting casualties; there was a complicated system of tagging the injured to show what drugs they had already been given and the priority for treatment, as well as registering their identities.

We were not allowed to go far outside of the hospital in case of an emergency and there was not much for us to do, so we wrote letters home, read, knitted and waited. Sitting in the dining room after breakfast on 6th June, we heard General Eisenhower’s broadcast about the landings on the Normandy coast and the atmosphere became electric, but there was still nothing we could do but wait. Late that evening a few patients were brought in, not battlefield casualties, but with injuries during transit, broken arms and legs, and I remember a Sergeant with a fractured pelvis who had been crushed by a tank which worked loose on a landing craft.

Thankfully, the numbers of wounded were not as heavy as anticipated and Tilbury had very few admissions, the military hospitals were able to take them all. A few days later the first flying bombs fell on Kent and then in London, so the area was considered unsafe. The Medical Corps was posted to places of greater need, civillian patients trickled in and after another fortnight we went back to Norwich. No-one seemed particularly interested in our expedition and we quickly slotted into our former routine.

I decided to apply for the QA’s the Army Nursing Service, but was turned down because of my short sight. I was keen to travel and contacted the Colonial Nursing Service, which was prepared to have me if I had some midwifery training, so I sent in an application and went off to Southmead Hospital. Like Norwich, Bristol had been heavily bombed, the middle of the city was flattened and everywhere affected by five years of austerity and neglect. The hospital looked even shabbier than Norwich and a large part of the grounds had been taken over by the military as a blood transfusion depot, a sprawling collection of huts and vehicles. There were so many army personnel that there was even a NAAFI canteen, which nurses were allowed to use. It was very welcome(beans on toast and a sausage —for sixpence) as the hospital food seemed less inviting and skimpier than my previous diet. I saw a familiar face in the NAAFI one night, much to my surprise and his, one of the house surgeons from Norwich, now in the RAMC and preparing to serve overseas.

I found I was one of a group of twenty doing the course, from all parts of the country and for various reasons. Some because they were really interested and intended to stay in that branch of the profession, some because they needed the qualification as a step up the promotion ladder and some, like me, who wanted to work abroad and it was a must. One of us, the daughter of missionaries, finished by running a mission clinic in Gondar in Ethipoia and another went to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. She had and “Uncle Teddy who lives in Colombo” and I heard a lot about home and his very pleasant life style, which made me more than ever determined to go where the sun was shining as soon as the war was over.

We had a day’s acclimatisation before we started, including a brief welcome from Matron. I was singled out for a special mention as she had been at the Norfolk and Norwich and I was the first pupil midwife from her old training school. Our Sister was dragon on first acquaintance and greeted us by saying in so many words, “I expect you’ve all been Staff Nurses or Sisters before you came here, but now you’re only pupil midwives and it will be back to bedpan rounds and all the junior chores!” Having made it clear where we stood, she was an excellent teacher and everyone passed the exams.

Like general nursing, midwifery then was very different from today. Most mothers still had their babies at home and the ones in hospital were emergencies or those expected to have serious problems. Antenatal care was not universal and there were no scans or hi-tech investigations. Most pregnant women relied on their mothers or neighbours and friends for advice and went to their own doctor to arrange for a midwife to come at the expected time for the delivery. Another big difference in the maternity care was the length of stay in hospital, tem days was the rule, no getting out of bed for the first five days and then only to sit out for bed making. Caesarean operations were a rarity and only done after serious consideration and often as a last resort.

We looked after the mothers and babies on the wards and got to know them quite well as they were with us for so long. The babies were kept in the nursery and we bathed and changed them and we all had our favourites. I was always surprised at other people’s choices, but it all worked out quite well and we felt a little sorry each time when “our” baby was taken home by it’s parents. The babies were on 3 hourly feeds and breast-feeding was the norm, bottles were never suggested except for the baby of a very sick mother, or one with a serious underlying medical condition. There was little that could be done for very small premature babies and care for bigger ones was basic. They were kept warm, given oxygen and fed breast milk by dropper if they could not suck.

We had lectures at the hospital and went out to antenatal clinic in different parts of the city where we examined the expectant mothers under the watchful of the doctor in charge and an experienced midwife. We were taken to a special unit for venereal diseases, where the advent of antibiotics had improved treatment and the possibility of a complete cure. VD was a terrific problem throughout the war for both civilians and the military, despite a tremendous propaganda campaign by the Government, with posters everywhere and notices in public lavatories.

Before we were allowed to scrub up and manage an actual delivery, we spent quite a lot of time in the labour wards, observing and learning. No fathers were allowed in and’ in any case, there wasn’t much spare room with midwives, pupils and medical students. To qualify for our certificates we had to do a minimum of ten supervised deliveries and this took me almost to the end of my training, as the pupils were in competition with the medical students, who also had a quota to meet and had priority over us.

I spent three months out of the six month course on night duty and it was a very cold winter. When I finally returned to day duty, I was allocated a room in a house on the perimeter of the grounds and shared it with three others. It was not ideal, but it was only a temporary measure and its great advantage was that it had a fireplace. This meant we could sometimes light a fire when we came off duty in the evenings. The house was near the coal heaps for supplying the hospital heating and we gathered enough in paper bags (no plastic then) to keep a fire going most of the night. The only snag was clearing out the ashes next morning and not leaving any traces of the crime.

When it was exam time, we had the choice of taking the exams in Bristol or in London. I decided to opt for London and went home to Lowestoft, sitting the written papers and practical a few days apart. On the second visit to London, I saw General Eisenhower and Montgomery — they were coming out of a building in Whitehall and as I walked along with one of my fellow examinees, everyone began running and shouting. We joined the crowd and caught a glimpse of the two men as they got into a vehicle.

I passed the exams which were very thorough and included being closely questioned on my written answers in front of the examiner during the practical session. Now, if I wanted to, I could add CMB Part 1 to SRN after my name and could practice midwifery in a hospital under medical supervision. About half our group went on to do a further six months of training, doing home deliveries to complete their certificates and said it was the best part of the course, but I Was not persuaded. The war came to an end in August 1945, with the defeat of Japan. In march 1946, I went to Palestine for two years and worked until the British Mandate ended in May 1948 and the State of Israel was established.

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