Nurse's memories

On 3rd September, 1939, as one of the nurses at the Middlesex Hospital who was aged under 21, and with several of my collegues, I was evacuated by bus to a hospital in Neasden, near Willesden. On our arrival we were rushed into the Nurses' sitting room to hear the P.M. Neville Chamberlain, declare war on Germany.
Almost immediately after his speech the air-raid siren sounded and we were herded into an air-raid shelter. Things calmed down considerably after that for many months. I was returned to the Middlesex Hospital on 18th August, 1940, the day we had heard rumoured that Hitler was to invade Britain!
During one of my spells of duty at Mount Vernon Hospital, Northwood, a sector hospital, one evening when "changes of duty" were read out at suppertime I was told to report for Theatre duty in the morning - something I'd never looked forward to. I remember being shaken by the shoulder to wake me up and someone saying "you are theatre staff aren't you". I mumbled "I suppose so" and was told to get up and go straight on duty. It was 4 a.m. I soon learned that casualties were being brought back from Dunkirk. The next few days are rather hazy in my memory. I know there were three operating tables occupied in ech theatre, instead of the usual one. All available surgeons were brought in to operate, and it was realized that they worked for three days and nights with scarely a break. I don't remember how long the nurses worked at a time, but as they very junior member of the theatre staff my main job seemed to be carrying limbs, or part of limbs, to the sluice room.
Finding ones way around even some of the most familiar streets of London was rather tricky in the "blackouts". The blackout was very strictly imposed by the ARP wardens.
On a Saturday afternoon in September, 1940, the man I had recently met, and who later became my husband of 59 years, spent some tme in Hyde Park listening to the band when the sirens sounded and we watched a large number of German planes making for the East End. We rather foolishly took a bus to see what was happening and saw the awful sight of the London Docks on fire. To return to the hospital we sat upstairs on a bus for what seemed an unusually long time, then decided to go to a nearby air-raid shelter where we found the bus driver and conductor, and a very irate air-raid warden who gave us a good telling off. We eventually persuaded the bus crew to take us back. They let us off at the end of Berniers St., and said they would not be stopping again till they reached their garage at Hendon.
In the event of an air-raid the Nurses' home had to be evacuated. This meant going by an underground passage to the sub-basement of the hospital building. Our 'beds' were the concrete foundations of the hospital where we must have spent many hours. The male members of staff attached to the hosptial - Doctors, Medical Students, Porters, etc., worked in shifts as fire-watchers on the roof of the hospital. It was quite usual for nurses to go to the roof of their home after a noisy night of bombing to make sure that St. Paul's was still standing.
Night duty could be a rather hair-raising experience. The night the BBC (which was quite close by) was hit as Bruce Belfrage was starting to read the 9 p.m. news, I was in a make-shift ward looking after some elderly people who had been "bombed out" of a home in Marylebone Road. I was sitting, writing at what I obviously took to be a desk when the explosion occurred and ducked down, nearly knocking myself out as it was a chest-of-drawers. I had to show myself to my patients who wanted to make sure I was unhurt. However, the night sister arrived soon afterwards and asked me if everything was alright. I thought it was! but when she moved the blinds to one side we found there were no windows remaining!
Another night I remember a bomb landing which sounded very close and as I walked the length of the ward I wasn't sure if the bathrooms at the end would still be there. They were! but the next morning I found a block of buildings on the opposite side of the road had disappeared. That bomb site was eventually taken over by some of the London Fire Brigade, where they apparently kept pigs.
Of course there was the experience of returning in the evening by underground and seeing all the families settling themselves in for the night to sleep on the platforms and stepping carefully over others who were already asleep. Pavements were often covered with glass in the evenings.
Houses which had been bombed and sliced apart would sometimes have a picture still hanging on a remaining wall.
Naturally there were some really tragic sights - relatives of missing people arriving the morning after a raid and asking to be allowed to go round the casualties who had been admitted overnight. It was often quite difficult for the patients to be easily recognized, especially as the most critically injured were probably still covered in dirt and dust. The less seriously injured were removed the next day, by buses adapted as ambulances, to sector hosptals at Stoke Mandeville and Aylesbury.
I remember after spending a day off duty at home in Sussex my parents sent me back to London early in the evening, thinking it would be safer than later on. When I arrived I decided to go to see a show at the "London Palladium". Fortunately the Palladium was not bombed!
I had left the hospital before the end of the war and spent most of my time at my home, which was on the route for enemy aircraft on their way to London. It was also on one of the routes for the "Doodle Bombs". Life could be very noisy with aircraft overhead and anti-aircraft guns going of and causing the door knockers to bang. I had married and was expecting out first baby and had to spend many nights sitting under the stairs with other members of my family.

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