'Stretcher-bearers': (6) First 'Medical Posting'

First "Medical posting"

Private Peel has had a raw deal in his army career. He volunteered in 1940 for the Medical Corps, after gaining some experience with a St. John's Ambulance unit. In the army he passed his 3rd class nursing orderly examination with ease and took on medical jobs that required some experience. He was happy to accept promotion which never came his way.
He is now in charge of Medical Inspection Room, Nth Corps, and looks after some 200 men who have access to a medical officer only on sick parade between 8.45 and 9.30 a.m.
When Peel notified the orderly room back at Ipswich that his leave was already a month overdue, the clerks started looking for a temporary successor.
First Sgt Killick offered this medical plum to Carrundy, in peace time a teacher of modern languages, who declined for personal reasons. He had just accepted an invitation from our colonel to coach him in French and was sickening for promotion.
Killick's next choice was McRae, a talented impersonator, versed in deliveriung Churchillian speeches. McRae is hoping to work for ENSA, ( entertainment for the forces) so he too declined.
How many more candidates Killick consulted is unknown. Briefly, I landed the job and was very pleased to have a change from futile spit-and-polish parades.
In full marching order, a load of heavy books in my large pack, I reported to the orderly room for the RSM's valedictory blessing. We had mildly locked horns during a lecture a few days before, when he had bemoaned our general ignorance and I had suggested that this might be due to lack of practical experience, a remark which may have helped me to secure the job.
The RSM did not materialise, so a two-seater staff car was commandeered to drive me through a blinding snow blizzard to Storton. Here a Corporal Canister was installed in a large MI room with a ward attached. The ward was empty.
Another corporal informed me that I was to be driven out to H.Q. X to take over duties from Peel.
The two corporals explained that there was no hurry, so I passed some of the time at this half-way stop looking down on Storton' main street at the glazed slab of a fishmonger's shop. The centrepiece was half a cod which the fishmonger would water frequently with pride. Shellfish and fish cakes were the only other attractions.
Turning my attention inwards, I found the ward a filthy sight. It overlooked the main street and had three high dust-laden window panes. There were six beds in the ward, all showing signs of recent habitation, one and all harbouring dirt and stains. Changing sheets did not appear a regular practice, and the pillow slips had served overtime.
Dust was clinging to the bed rails. Cigarette stubs, spent matches and drops of calamine lotion daubed the floor. Yellow patches of damp and sooty smudges marked one of the walls. The whole room smelled musty and was intensely cold.
At lunch time one of the corporals showed me the Medical Inspection room which was certainly filthier than the ward. It was littered with games spilled from cardboard boxes, gaudy paperbacks and old newspapers. There seemed to be no heating.
I was relieved when an ambulance arrived after lunch to take me to X Corps., where I found Peel sweeping the floor with an almost bald broom. Before leaving he explained fully the nature of the job.
At long last! My first M.I. room posting for over a year!
We began with a boil, a big, blind one, situated on the gluteus maximus, (bum), painful from the patient Mansell's point of view, and difficult to bandage from mine.
At first sight the job appeared simple, a quick rush between 6 a.m. and 8.45 a.m. to wash, shave, have breakfast, light three fires, make up the bed, clean the M.I. room, heat the sterilisers, hold the sick parade, carry out the treatments prescribed by the MO and then enjoy complete freedom.
In practice, the departure of the MO. really marked the beginning of an unofficial parade, attended by the genuine and malingerers in quite large numbers. Both sorts prefaced their entries with "I did not want to report sick but...." , before blurting out some reasonable or unlikely story.
The R.A.S.C driver may wish to break the monotony of lorry maintenance for a short time. He will find a cough. Then a cook, whose day has started very early, calls in with a scalded finger. Occasionally someone enters with a serious complaint, unwisely preferring second-rate to skilled attention. Army doctors can be formidable.
Finally, there are the hypochondriacs, whose gloom can be temporarily relieved by sympathetic listening to their stories of abject misery, lightened only when they recount in detail their ailments. The best treatment for these is anything out of a bottle, the more colourful the better. Usually a tablespoonful of Mist. Expect. Stim. (cough mixture) warms the cockles, but encourages patients to come back for more.
Numbered pills from the army medicine chest are not so popular. The notorious number 9 has to be shunned and there are at least two other numbers that produce similar distressing results. I tend to dispense aspirins and Dover tablets without identifying them to patients. The most powerful treatment is the chat which ends by convincing the invalid that he will be flea fit on the morrow,. assuming that he has passed the FFI (Free from Infection inspection).
Bartering for medicine is the accepted practice here. Some patients believe that the M.I. orderly gives out his own medicine at whim so they like to return thanks. Hence, for my comfortimg remedies I have been offered cigarettes, a cheese sandwich, an invitation to the back of the sergeants mess cookhouse and help with lighting morning fires. There is no shortage of of food and friendship.
The third day brought a spot of excitement. I had just finished dressing Mansell's ugly boil, when he staggered to his feet and fainted in the doorway.. Following the rules I "loosened all tight clothing" and then, rather dubiously, tried to shake him into consciousness. This was not in army regulations, but it worked , so I propped his left unboiled buttock on a chair where he gradually recovered.
I took his temperature (100.2) told him to go straight to bed and not to report sick next day. I would ask to MO to call in on him.
Next day Mansell had not appeared some ten minutes before treatment was due to start, so I went to his hut. I found him half dressed with no intention either of reporting sick or staying in bed. His temperature was still a little above normal and the boil, although showing some signs of coming to a head, was much inflamed.. I invited him to attend for treatment and he accepted.
Several distinguished visitors called in today , including an RSM (Regimental Sergeant Major), a CSM (Company Sergeant Major) and an officer. They received the required treatment without any bartering.
WATS (Women's Army Territorial Service) pose a diversion from normal sick parade routine. They are new to X and have been in the army for only five weeks.
A stocky, no-nonsense woman sergeant accompanies them, hovering over her protegees throughout the proceedings. Her importance far surpasses that of the MO. I appear on the scene only to fill in the patient's name and age on the sick report form, after which I am instructed to retire, when treatment is carried out.
The sudden decision to start corps manoeuvres put paid temporarily to Orderly Room X. It was closed and I was ordered to take over duties at Storton, the cold, filthy hovel I had been so relieved to escape.
Arriving at about 10 a.m. I found the place in turmoil, the two lance-corporals hastily packing for the manoeuvres and, as a side-show, dealing with a long sick parade.
Occasionally they would call out orders to me.
"Just hang on" and "Hold the fort", they ordered.
"Don't give out any sick parade forms. Don't stand mutiny from that RASC. bugger", who apparently had been detailed to assist me.
"With what authority?", I asked.
"Doesn't matter. He's easy to deal with. And leave the beds as they are. No need to change the sheets and don't take in any patients... Go easy on the coal.".
"What about a clock?"
"There isn't one."
"This thermometer looks broken."
" No. It works all right. And don't stand any messing around by the MOs. What you need is plenty of bullshit. See what I mean?"
"What about the bismuth?"
"Don't worry about that. Where's my bloody respirator? Right. That's all We'll
b ..... off!"
From 10.30 until lunch time I started tidying. String, dog-ends and dust littered the stairs, packing cases and panniers clogged the passage and the lavatory, in spite of the notice "Keep this place clean. It has to be used by others ", presented a nauseating sight.
In the waiting room, in front of the gas fire, someone had been trying to cook a welsh rarebit. This had slipped through the slats of a bench and was for the greater part spreadeagled on the floor.
The ward and M.I. room were quite as grubby as when I had last seen them.
In the afternoon I had cleaned stairs, passage, lavatory and M.I. room when patients, that I had not expected until the following morning, began to assemble and soon a new MO appeared as substitute for the regular one who was now on manoeuvres.
The new doctor's reactions on visiting the place were not comforting. In the first five minutes he declared that it was " a bloody dirty little hole, filthy, tiresome and depressing. " Soon he expanded his reflections, stating the obvious, that it was cold and dusty, and adding, for good measure, that it was the worst place he had ever entered since he took his commission.
He then asked me if I did not agree that it was a miserable dump I said "Yes" but that I had been in several worse places.
Not finding as much sympathy as he had desired, he sought consolation in phoning his officers's mess while I swept round him.
He began "For God's sake, get me out of this bloody hole!" and referred to me as "The genius left in charge here," in tones of deepest sarcasm.
The climax arrived when I took the temperature of a patient with the thermometer that "works all right". It didn't.
He became so irritating in his complaints, directed exclusively at me, that I raised my voice and refused to accept full responsibility. Here he clapped me on the back and asserted that he quite understood and realised the position. That seemed highly improbable..
Next morning he presented me with two bed patients, one with a torn cartilage and the other with swelling after a hernia operation. He also proved very conscientious in dealing with a sick parade of over 20.
He was a good medical officer, although objectionable as a man, and we finished the parade feeling rather better disposed to each other.
Meals for two extra people entailed more work. I also had to change sheets which the two corporals had ordered me to leave. I felt impelled to do so because one of the patients claimed to have found a flea in his bed, This did not surprise me. However, when I asked to view its corpse, he declared that he had killed and burnt it. Verdict "Not Proven."
Next morning coal was desperately low, the substitute doctor very cold. He was also enjoying his spoilt child mood and waxed peevish because I had arranged the freshly dusted medicine bottles "tallest on the flanks" while he preferred to have all sizes mixed.. Later, when I asked to borrow his thermometer, he implied bluntly that I might purloin it.
After he had, rather flatteringly, called me aside for a private consultation, and all he wanted to know was whether I had ever seen a dirtier neck than his last patient's, I parried by claiming that sanitary conditions at X were deplorable, as was true.
Went to bed after midnight drained, to be roused next morning at 6.15 a.m.
Half way through sick parade the two lance corporals returned and ordered me to help unpack. I did so.
Then L/Cpl Canister let loose a tirade in public on the condition of the MI floor, which I had swept but not scrubbed. After that he ordered me to "get cracking" on mending a broom, so I retired in disgrace while he was deploring the state of affairs to the substitute MO.
Then the corporal ordered me to move some boxes. Here I went on strike and told him that I had already exceeded my duty under impossible conditions and was going to return to X forthwith. He grew very red in the face and summoned me before the MO who, to my great surprise, told me to return to X in his staff car. He also undertook to send on a bottle of mist. expect. stim. which Canister had appropriated from X.
The bottle arrived safely the following day.
Back at X, peace reigned once more, and Peel was very happy with the state of affairs. Apparently, he too had been experiencing trouble with Canister.
We spent two days pleasantly together before I was recalled.

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