Nursing 1939-1945 Chapter 4

We rarely had Forces personnel brought in, as they went straight to the military hospitals, but early in the war, two German airmen, whose plane had been shot down, were admitted. They were not badly injured and were put in the Isolation block and guarded by the RAF for the two days it took before they were transferred and an SOS went out to all hospital staff for any German speakers. We did have an occasional American patient who was quickly gathered up by the authorities and taken to the safety of their own base. One stayed long enough to ask his friends to bring us some soap and candy, which we were allowed to accept —otherwise there was a strict rule of no presents from patients. This was difficult for patients who wanted to show their appreciation, but the women would offer to do sewing or knitting for us, even darning our black stockings. There was no radio on the wards, so they were glad to have something to do if they felt well enough. It was a great time for made-do and mend and new stockings needed coupons — they were either lisle or rayon and didn’t last long without going into ladders and holes. There was a system of recycling our brown off-duty stockings by boiling them in a saucepan of black dye. The result was quite good, but after several washings the colour began to fade, leading to reprimands from the Assistant Matron that stockings must be black and not gunmetal. We used leather dye to transform our off duty shoes into black for the wards and this worked well as Cheery blossom polish kept the colour in. We made gloves out of chamois leather or knitted mittens out of scraps of wool and sometimes an ARP blanket finished up as a dressing gown. We would have been very careful with our clothes, even without clothes rationing, as our pay did not allow for extravagance. We had twenty pound a year to begin, thirty pounds in the second year and forty pounds in the third. After our finals, it was sixty pounds and we felt positively wealthy, but when I went to midwifery, it dropped down again to fifty pounds.

I used to go home by train on my days off. Lowestoft, being on the East coast, was a restricted area and I had to get a special pass, showing that my parents were resident there. The town was a target for bombers as it was a big naval base and things were so bad at one time that my parents, like quite a lot of the population, used to drive into the country every evening and stay in a cottage, leaving early next morning for my father to get to work. My mother was a member of the WVS and took turns as the ARP Report Centre, where all incidents were logged and any follow-up co-ordinated by the district HQ. My sister was at Teacher Training College in Torquay, evacuated from Stockwell in London. Everybody was busy, digging for victory, fire watching, helping at forces canteens and Red Cross. The war effort was a reality especially when I saw the beaches and cliffs where I had played as a child, covered with tank traps and mines and machine gun points to keep out invaders.

We didn’t have a lot of off-duty time, a list was written up each week by Sister allocating our daily free periods; 10am-1pm in the morning, 2-5pm in the afternoon, or 5-8pm in the evening. Lectures came out of free time and when on night duty it meant going to the lecture room soon after you came off duty — you sat trying to be intelligent when all you wanted was to fall into bed or go out for some fresh air. Night duty was a three month stint, as it was considered that this gave one time to acclimatise and was rewarded by three days a month off, instead of two days for day duty. Nights were busy times even if there were no air raids or emergency admissions. In any lull between general patient care, we cut and folded gauze and cotton wool and packed dressing drums ready for sterilising. The night staff also made and served breakfast for the patients. This meant cutting a mountain of bread and butter (no sliced loaves), and making a huge saucepan of porridge with oatmeal and milk and water, which was nice and creamy if cooked long enough. There were also sausages and kippers, sometimes bacon rashers, which were cooked on big trays in the oven. Some of the patients might have fresh eggs brought in by their families. It was a rush to get round and have everything tidied up before the day staff arrived and we were grateful if any patients were well enough to take round cups of tea and help with clearing away.

From breakfasts for patients is a short step to hospital food in general. Not known for quality before the war, it suffered from the same problems with rationing and shortages as the rest of the population. We handed over our ration books as soon as we arrived and carried round our weekly butter ration, 2oz, in screw top jars, the rest of our allowances went into the communal larder. There was fish on Fridays and meat in the form of mince or stew on other days, except Sundays when it was slices in gravy. There were sausages or macaroni cheese at supper time and a rota of rice pudding, prunes and custard and semolina mould, white, pink or cocoa flavored. At Harvest Festivals in September, the churches sent in boxes of produce, and for weeks we had marrows in different guises and stewed apples and plums. Between breakfast and lunch we had “elevenses” at about 9 o’clock and ‘ together with tea or cocoa, there was always a big bowl of dripping, with toast if got there early, otherwise with plain bread. Bread was not rationed so there was plenty for filling empty corners. At tea time, we sometimes made mustard sandwiches, jam being in short supply. They were surprisingly palatable and with a little imagination, you could think there was ham inside too!

As the bombing in London continued, Norwich took in medical students from the big teaching hospitals, which had been blitzed. They were all nationalities, Czechs and Austrians predominated, refugees who had escaped from occupied countries and were very serious about their studies. We liked their foreign accents and friendliness and could wonder about their lives before they reached the comparative safety of England. When they had teaching rounds on the wards, I was pleased if I was sent to chaperone and deal with screens and bedclothes. I found the tuition interesting and could feel mildly smug if the students didn’t know the answers and I did —but of course, I wasn’t asked! The senior surgeon Mr. Charles Noon had a stock of amusing anecdotes, which he told to illustrate his points and having heard them repeated several times, I realised that they contained a lot of common sense. Mr. Noon was something of a character, a kindly man with a somewhat abrupt manner; he drove a Rolls-Royce, wore a bowler hat outside and inside the hospital and operated in his flannel shirt and braces under a theatre gown.

At this stage of the war, women were having to register for war work when they reached 18, and we started having girls who opted for nursing in preference to being drafted into factories, the Forces, or the Land Army. Some of them had had a rather basic education and needed extra tuition, but there was not shortage of trainees.

Norwich was a good place for entertainment. There were all-star productions at the Theatre Royal, as so many of the London theatres had been bombed. The Carl Rosa Opera Company and the Doyley Carte visited regularly and I saw Richard Tauber in Lilac Time. The Elizabethan theatre, and the Maddermarket, carried on with Shakespeare and the classics and there were concerts and recitals with distinguished soloists. There were numerous cinemas, open every day of the week since the war started, before that they were shut on Sundays. I went to the Cathedral each year to hear Messiah, sung by the likes of Isobel Bailey, Heddle Nash and Jan Van Der Gucht. The Cathedral escaped the bombs but St Julian’s church, where the fourteenth century mystic Dame Julian had her cell, was badly damaged and many historic landmarks in the city disappeared, including a fascinating area known as Back of the Inns.

In warm weather, there was swimming in the river and towards the end of my training; I had two holidays on the Broads with one of the physiotherapists, who was an experienced sailor. We spent a week each time enjoying the scenery and peace of the waterways. At the little pubs by the staithes where we tied up for the night, we were warmly welcomed as the war had curtailed much of their trade.

Back on dry land, there were quite a lot of us who had been in plays at school and we decided to put on a pantomime to raise funds for the Red Cross. I wrote the scripts and everyone helped with costumes and props. For music we were lucky enough to have an accordion player and a an indefatigable pianist. It was a problem fitting in rehearsals round people’s off duty times but we managed and our first production was Cinderella. I made a ball gown for the heroine out of butter muslin and cheesecloth, which were not rationed and decorated it with beads and pearls from old necklaces. The military tailors in the city, Stones, lent us some scarlet coats for Prince Charming and his friend and a top hat for the Baron and long coats for the Broker’s men. It was triumph of teamwork and we staged it in St Stephen’s church hall near by, with Matron as guest of honour. It went so well, that we did one the following year — The Sleeping Beauty.

For part of our training, we went to the Jenny Lind children’s hospital on the edge of town. It had been founded in the 1880’s by the singer, Jenny Lind, known as The Swedish Nightingale, who gave concerts all over England to raise money for sick children, and it seemed like a doll’s house after the big hospital. A lot of the children were long-stay patients with TB spines and hips, nursed on plaster beds or on splints. The children’s beds and cots were pushed outside whenever the weather was suitable, which must have been a welcome change for them. Visiting was strictly limited, and no-one at that time had thought of providing any entertainment or education for the, and they were understandably bored and fretful.

There were sick babies with feeding problems suffering from malnourishment and older children who needed surgery, mastiodectomy, after bad ear infections, a nasty operation and a thing of the past once antibiotics were obtainable. All the patients had a spoonful of “toffee”, cold liver oil and malt, or vitamin syrup, depending on age. There were children with hernias, burns, broken bones, and once a month an intake of children, twenty at a time, to have tonsil and adenoids removed. Having seen how distressed they were before and after this mainly unnecessary and messy procedure, one can only be thankful that it is not done nowadays except when really needed.

If we had any spare moments on the ward, there were dressing to prepare, bandages to be rolled — they were washed and recycled —and piles of mending. The children wore hospital clothes and they needed darning and tapes and buttons replaced as they came from the laundry mangles in more ways than one.

T last it was revision time before we sat our finals. The Nurses’ Progress Charts’ which had followed us for three years were complete — they listed tasks for each year which had to be demonstrated for Sister or Staff Nurse and signed for. The range of items covered everything from blanket baths to injections and urine testing. We had had surgical and medical lecture, describing symptoms and their treatments and nursing care, and the written exams were chiefly a matter of memorising these. The practical exams needed patients (volunteers) to act as guinea pigs for us to demonstrate straightforward procedures. We also had to prepare trays and trolleys with different sets of instruments and equipment and answer questions about them. We took great pains to look at our most professional for the examiners, hair neatly tucked into our caps, shoes well polished and we stood rather than sat until we were called in, to avoid creasing our highly starched uniforms. Once we had passed our finals, we were presented with an engraved hospital badge and given bows to tie under our chins attached to our caps with two pieces of tape, and instead of white starched belts, we wore navy petersham ones with buckles.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.