I’d already seen most of the young boys in the area escape by rushing off to war and I determined I would go too. There was a tiny private hospital in Penshurst, run by two sisters who were qualified nurses and midwives. Yes, they said, I could do the initial training as an aide here (after my eight-hour working day), and the 100 hours were spent mostly emptying pans and bottles and making beds, as well as studying for the certificates.
I went down to Gippsland where Mum, Dad, Kathleen and her toddlers were now living, and got a job in Wilkinson’s grocery shop in Warragul. Mr Wilkinson asked me for assurances that I would not be enlisting. ‘They just come to me until they’re old enough to enlist and off they go as if they have heard a bugle blow.’ ‘Oh, not me,’ I lied. But I had already enlisted and was waiting for my call-up, as had most of his employees under the age of forty.
But then, nothing happened. Months went by. I saw photographs in the Melbourne Sun of ‘VADs Leaving For Middle East’. A double-page spread. It seemed forever, then my time came, I was ordered to report to an office in Melbourne, swore the oath of something-or-other, told I would be called up shortly, and sent off to the Myer store to have my uniforms tailored. We were being rushed now, hurried.
The uniform was very smart: white shirt, navy-blue straight skirt, belted jacket with a woven Red Cross on our breast pocket, classic felt hat with Rising Sun badge, black shoes, small soft leather clutch-bag and gloves, tie and grey stockings. Pale blue uniforms were worn in wards, and we had a fine blue mess dress for evening. On each shoulder were fastened the solid metal flashes AUSTRALIA, beneath these were our felt colour patches, the symbol of the battalion or, in our case, the hospital to which we belonged (the pale grey background indicated those of us who had enlisted to go overseas, as opposed to those who would remain in hospitals back home).
No one who has not been in the services could possibly know the tenacity with which men and women held to their colour patches, even to the degree that, on occasions, if one was transferred to another battalion permission was given for miniatures of one’s original battalion or hospital to be worn as well as the new colour patch.
Insisting on miniature colour patches was, perhaps, a type of esprit d’corps, but beneath it was the ridiculous I’m-better-than-you syndrome. An example of this was if one returned from service from the Middle East and was then detailed to an army hospital that had not been away from Australia. That would have appeared ‘infra dig’ – it was vastly pucka to have been ‘O/S’, so the new patch was sewn on – and the miniature as well. Some of us moved around so many hospitals that, if we were silly about it, we could have had patches from wrist to armpit.
Behind and beyond this was a cruel jibe (but what is war but a cruel jibe at mankind?). Some men and women who had attempted to join up were unacceptable, usually because of health or infirmity. Some had been ‘man-powered’ and could not get a clearance. To many in the army this was seen as shirking – ‘He could have got in if he wanted, could have gone over the border and told a good story there and got himself in.’
(As late as June 1993 I received a sad letter from a woman who said her husband had died recently, ‘but he had really died many years ago’. He had gone in to enlist but was refused ‘owing to being in a protected service – munitions’. ‘He never got over it, he always felt people saw him as a shirker. And many did. He couldn’t join the RSL, he felt an outsider. He carried the stigma for life.’)
When we first came into the service we were billeted in a great Toorak mansion which had been turned over by the owners for the duration of the war. While I was there, waiting for my uniforms to be tailored, my Mother was permitted to visit and Aunt Anastasia came down from the country with her. Aunt had been out to visit her daughters, Victoria and Margaret, who had enlisted in the airforce. Mum was quite cock-a-hoop at seeing the opulent quarters in which her little girl was billeted, crystal chandeliers and all, while Anastasia’s girls were in ‘a stockade’, as Mum described the spartan quarters those early aircraftswomen had to survive when they first enlisted. If Mum had seen some of my later quarters she wouldn’t have been so cocky.
The VAD in charge of the hostel told me to ‘run the hot water’ to wash the dishes. Run the water? She must be pulling my leg! As far as I knew hot water came from a kettle on the wood-fire stove or, if for a bath, from the big copper in the washhouse outside in the back yard. ‘It will take a while for the hot water to come through’ Betsy told me as she left. I waited, wincing as the thick stream of sparkling clean water poured away down the sink and was wasted. I stuck my finger in a few times as water poured out of the tap, but it was still cold as I knew it would be – how could hot water come out of a tap unless the tank was out in the blazing sun, as it was back home up-country in summer? No wrigglers in this water! I waited. God knows how long I waited, but when Betsy came back she snapped, said, ‘Oh, it must be turned off, don’t just stand there!’ I knew I looked a fool but didn’t know what I had done wrong, didn’t know what had been turned off. I felt like every country child has at some time felt: the universe no longer centred around the bush and it never would again for me. I grew up and exchanged one way of life for another, quick smart.
If I had thought anything at all about the army except as a place to escape to, I could never have guessed what a total change it would be from my life up to that time – for any girl’s life, for that matter, because this war was the first that enlisted women other than trained nursing sisters into the services. In one sense you forgot your mother, father, sister and brother because they were now in the past and you were no longer under their control or within their ambit. You were under the total control of a machine that owned and operated you. There was no longer such talk as, ‘I’ll do that later, Mum.’ You did it – ‘Now!’ There was no answering back – that got you detention in barracks. And there was much more along those lines.
You were now a number and required to recite it when called upon. Few men or women can forget their service number, it stayed tattooed in our memory forever. We women had to wear our identity discs around our necks on a leather thong, as did the men, the only difference being that the letter F for female was now added to the women’s identification letters, that is, I was VFX: V for enlistment in the State of Victoria, F for female, X for volunteer for enlistment for overseas service. (My friend, Phyllis, had a heart murmur on enlistment, so was denied overseas service, her disc registering only VF.) Some called the discs ‘dog tags’, others ‘dead-meat tickets’. They were durable and would last forever under any conditions: the shower, the sweat of the tropics, or be readable for identification on dead bodies.
There was a marvellous and ridiculous use of words, language and titles in the services. When I was at 108 AGH (Australian General Hospital) at Ballarat there were WAGS and BAGS courses for airmen – Wireless Air Gunners and Bombing Air Gunners – and these lively lads, ‘Blue Orchids’ as the PBI (poor bloody infantry) called them because of their smart blue uniforms, didn’t really swagger as the infantry swore they did. When it was their turn to get a jab in the arm or the backside before leaving for overseas, all men were equal: as many tough infantry men fell flat to the floor as did the Blue Orchids before the needle went in, and many fell while merely standing well back in the line awaiting their turn.
We VADs did nothing courageous, left no mark showing that we had even been there, had worked so hard for such long hours and days and years but no, nothing marks where we had been. But like many other groups in that war and all other stupid wars, we were there.
In a period when a girl left her father’s home only to go to her husband’s home, these thousands of women in the navy, army and airforce had pioneered the greatest new movement in our history.
In one sense we girls were the lowest rank, but in another we were remarkable. You can’t dismiss a bevy, a great big mob of young, healthy, fit girls, many in love with someone ‘over there’, and all believing they were, by their labour, perhaps helping men
survive.
Them and Us
WHEN I WAS EVENTUALLY CALLED up to report to the army doctor he said ‘Right!’ like a rifle shot, signed my medical record A1, and that was that. I was then taken to the army dentist and he whipped out my four front teeth from my upper gum. It was so painful at first I didn’t have a thought for the terrible thing done to me, until I saw my face in the mirror. ‘I thought you were going to fill my front teeth!’ But, ‘No, we don’t do that for overseas enlistments.’ It seemed that an army doesn’t want a soldier who may be incapacitated with toothache at a time of great turmoil and movement. Had I not been enlisted for overseas service they would have filled the cavities. Instead, they put in a temporary plate where my own seventeen-year-old teeth had been and told me to go back to work, leaving the plate in my mouth for three days and nights. By the third day every patient I leant over must have near fainted from the stench. I mourned those lost teeth, and the replacements were no restitution. I wanted to write a letter about it but Sister Kirk said no one would bother, I must bear it, even if I didn’t grin. ‘They are “missing on active service”’ Sister said of my wailing complaints of my loss.
We were billeted all over the pretty little city of Ballarat. I was dumped out of an ambulance into a private house, and the woman hadn’t expected me at all: ‘You’ve got a spare bedroom,’ the sergeant accompanying us told her. ‘My son is at the war’ she replied, but she had to take me in, like it or not. Of course I didn’t mind at all; it was my first time ‘out on the loose’ by myself. The householder had no say in what I did, the army didn’t bother to see what I did, so I did what I liked whenever the ambulance dropped me back at my billet after work (and sometimes that was after a ten-hour shift). A quick shower and I’d be off out the gate.
For these first few weeks of hectic settlement, although the hours were long and we worked hard, I had found heaven. There was no overt discipline and no one knew where we went once we left the hospital. Coming from a strict teetotal family I, of course, went straight to the hotels. These were the days of six o’clock closing, but our long day’s work meant we weren’t in public houses during the day. However, the back doors were open for servicemen and women for as long as the customers or liquor flowed. It didn’t damage me at all, it merely taught me how to survive in such a society and a strong, young constitution can weather any amount of punishment. Times were different, and I never heard of a servicewoman being either hassled or violated.
We moved from our scattered billets to a large home, which must have made life easier for the ambulance drivers who had to pick us up for our shifts. (Were there any of the great homes left untramped by the army for those six years?) One of our own VADs ran the whole group of us as housekeeper and commander. There were twelve girls to a room, and I never heard a sound after we got into our hard beds, we were always exhausted.
First night, word came from Matron that a convoy of Americans was coming into the hospital and we were to return to work, to hop to it and wash and run all night. We’d none of us met Americans. We weren’t too thrilled about it. ‘Got in when they were pushed in’ was the saying, referring to their tardiness in entering the war. The following night we arrived back at the home a little earlier, and six of us were promptly told off to accompany six American marines to an American Army concert – as a show of compatibility between the two nations, I suppose. Matron turned up to see we were properly turned out in our blue neck-to-knee mess dresses and relatively high black heeled shoes. Even with this lift I could not have been compatible with my partner: he was six feet seven inches tall. I was five feet. Everyone laughed as we stood to meet these nattily dressed men. He was shy, horribly nervous, so I put my arm through his – ‘Enough of that, nurse!’ snapped Matron, and I took my arm away.
The concert was held in a big drill hall with a splendid USA Marine band playing. This night, we Australian girls heard for the first time the song ‘Elmer’s Tune’. ‘Why are the stars always prancing and dancing around?’ and the shy giant whispered, ‘We brought the tune over with us. It’s new.’ I was offended. I didn’t want an American to tell me they knew more than us. ‘We’ve been in the war a long time. We haven’t had time to compose songs!’ Oh God. Even as I heard it coming out I winced, and began to apologise. ‘No’, he said, ‘You’re proud of your country. Our own country is always the best.’ I tried to thank him but we were shushed as the music tumbled on and we never spoke of it again. We six girls shook hands with our partners at the door of the billets and went to bed to be ready for the quarter to six ambulance call.
A few weeks later things loosened up a little and I remember one night very well. I was with some of the girls in our rest room brushing my hair when two American officers were ushered in, with invitations to a mess dinner. One immediately took my hair-brush and began, most expertly, to brush my very thick hair. ‘I always brushed my sister’s hair back home’ he said. He couldn’t have been much older than me. He came from Butte, Montana.
Years later, in 1980, I was researching in America and was passing through Butte, Montana, so I asked the local paper if it were likely we could meet. I was there for only that one night, I must work all next day on official papers and be away on the evening Greyhound bus. And in the charming way Americans do these things, they produced the man, his wife and children. ‘The Hair Dresser!’ he announced, and in front of his family we had a cuddle and a kiss – which was far more than we would have managed forty years ago.
One of our girls had been gathering autographs on her cotton dressing gown, and would then embroider the name, which I thought to be a rather daring thing to be carrying around, and I bet Matron would have thought so too if she had heard of it. But our supervisor was a sensible, accomplished woman and ran a tight billet. The boy from Butte asked if I remembered the girl whose gown he had autographed and she was to sew. But, like so much we had forgotten, I didn’t even remember her name. I was probably miffed, probably bloody annoyed in fact, because I had begun needlework autographs on a luncheon cloth and this now appeared a pale thing against a dressing gown!
Until they got their own hospitals going we had American patients, and I once went by train to Melbourne and met, by arrangement, a young American GI on a day’s leave from our hospital. He was irritable, irritated by his uniform rubbing the burn scars on his back, the day was hot, and he pushed his cap back just as an American army provost patrol came along. They snapped at him for being ‘unofficially dressed’ or for one of the many stupidities of army etiquette, and he snapped back. They could see his wound stripes but they, with no service chevrons, decided to bully. With my usual quick temper tamped down to sweetness I said, ‘Please sergeant, I’m taking him back to hospital. This is my job.’ Me! The lowest pan handler ‘taking’ anyone anywhere! But it worked and we plodded off, the day ruined. We went to the movie we had planned to see, but as we entered the already seated audience saw our distinctly different uniforms and began to sing ‘When a boy from Alabama meets a girl from Gundagai’, the latest Jack O’Hagen song – a ‘hit’. ‘Very soon they’re walking out together, a new day has begun.’ That embarrassed us and we sat rigid, not even opening the candy he had got specially from the American canteen for me. At interval we left, took an early train back and parted at the railway station, he to travel back in a US ambulance, me to wait until a tram came by. I don’t recall meeting again. I imagine those years were like that for most people.
In 1987 I was interviewing Jack O’Hagen for a TV documentary I was doing for the BBC and told Jack the story. ‘Poor children’ he said, holding my hand. I told him we were never desolate. We lived for the day, in all truth, that is what we all did. We moved, always suddenly, and I never again met American servicemen although I later often saw them when I came down to Brisbane. Out of a lopsided loyalty to our own men, whose uniform looked poor against the extraordinarily splendid American uniform, I refused to dance with them, or indeed, to acknowledge them in any way. So much for partners in wartime!
When we would have to go through Brisbane on ‘marching orders’ to somewhere else, we always had to stay overnight and embark on another train in the morning, and so we had the night free. We always went to the Brisbane Town Hall dance, with its unique circular dance floor. Here the ‘Yanks’ – as we disdainfully said – were jitter-bugging. We, who spent our war years away from big cities, had not learnt this dance. Neither had the Australian servicemen. Naturally, we therefore all agreed it was disgusting.
THE VAD’s ‘IF’
by ‘One of Them’
If you can work all day without your make-up,
Your snappy hairdo hidden ’neath your veil,
If you can serve up umpteen dozen dinners,
Then wait on Matron without turning pale;
If you can wash the everlasting dishes,
And then turn round and wash the trolley too,
And when your mess jobs are all finished,
Tidy up your tent for inspection and review.
If you can track down your elusive orderlies,
And make them help you when they’d rather shirk;
If you can run on countless errands for the Sister,
And still be up to date with all your work,
If you can make the orange drinks and egg flips,
About the diets knowing all there is to tell,
Goodbye Girlie Page 4
