No Time For Romance

by Lucilla Andrews

  A chorus, ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Of course I’m not! I’m under my bed! But I’m sure my roof’s come in!’

  ‘If you’re not hurt, shove a pillow over your head and go to sleep!’

  In the morning we were woken by yells of laughter further down the hut. ‘My God, she was right! The roof’s caved in onto her bed and she’s sleeping like a baby underneath. Give us a hand shifting her clear!’

  The light sleeper awoke, unhurt, unshocked, torn between fury and complacence. ‘Didn’t I say this would happen?’

  The patients worried for us. ‘You nurses got no air-raid shelter? Not even tin lids?’

  ‘Not us. We’re civvy nurses. Sorry you’ve all had such a rough night.’

  ‘We did all right, nurse. The night nurses gave us all extra mugs of tea. Always kip lovely after a good cuppa.’

  At home on one day off in early autumn Father asked, ‘Have you any idea of the number of really difficult and demanding patients you have now met?’

  ‘Yes. Since 1940, three. Two men, one woman.’

  The roof of our house had long been repaired, the windows were not all intact and in my parents’ bedroom and the kitchen, temporary battens held up the temporary ceilings. Mother was in WVS uniform, working full-time at the local WVS centre and two nights a week as a Civil Defence firewatcher. John had joined the RAF. Father’s age, 67, exempted him from all National Service. ‘The only member of my family presently minus a uniform.’

  His appearance disturbed me. For the first time I thought he looked his age, but his medical check after being blown across the garden by the blast had apparently been satisfactory. I knew he was very anxious about John’s flying training in particular and the war in general. John was a few months past his seventeenth birthday. When father with Dopey saw me off at the station, he glanced at the huge poster on the wall. MEN OF SEVENTEEN AND A QUARTER TO THIRTY THREE CAN FLY WITH THE RAF. ‘If this war lasts much longer,’ he observed dryly, ‘His Majesty’s Government will be calling boys of fifteen, men.’

  In the train I reminded myself it was not surprising Father should be showing his age after the long dragging weariness of a war that still seemed endless. Also I knew he had never wholly recovered from deep sense of personal shock he had suffered from the British surrenders in the Far East in 1942. It might be 1943, but Father remained a Victorian Englishman and held fast to his Victorian attitudes, convictions and loves. He had loved and taken pride in the Empire in which he had worked for so many years, and felt the same emotions towards his own country. In many ways he was a very simple man, despite, or possibly because of, his subtlety of intellect. It was not merely that the word ‘surrender’ had no place in his personal vocabulary; he did not understand its meaning. Any battle was an event that for him could have only two ends; victory or death.

  In another day off in 1943 – and in that year we talked together more than at any other time in my life – we discussed the personal and professional battles that occur in private lives. He said, ‘Never fight for the sake of fighting. But once your intelligence is convinced you have no alternative to putting up a fight, fight hard, keep on fighting hard, and only stop fighting hard when you’ve won.’ Then he laughed. ‘You can then enjoy the breathing space until the next round.’

  Before 1943 was out my set were prematurely back on night-duty and owing to the shortage of more senior third and fourth years, instead of, as normally, working as ‘reliefs’ – i.e., nurses who moved between wards relieving the nights off of both seniors and juniors and gaining gradual experience of the senior position – most of us went straight into the senior job. At that point in the war the continuing need of the Forces Medical Services for newly qualified doctors and S.R.N.s was stretching increasingly thinly the medical and trained nursing staffs in civilian hospitals. The EMS came into this category.

  The night senior’s position in my training was probably the most responsible, and in my view the most interesting, of our student years. Briefly, the senior was in sole charge of her ward at night, assisted by seldom more than one junior, and supervised, mostly if only for geographical reasons at a distance, by the Night Sister (not yet re-named Night Superintendent), her one, or at the most two, deputies, and the resident medical staff. In Botley’s, as in all large general hospitals of my experience, the Night Sister and her deputies were responsible for the whole hospital at night, based in the Matron’s office from whence they made constant sorties round the wide-spread wards. Every ward, every night, received three official ‘Night Sister’s rounds’; every ward in an emergency immediately contacted Night Sister’s office. Usually each round lasted about twenty minutes. The residents all did night rounds of all their respective wards, generally between 10 p.m. and 12.30 a.m., and when in bed for the night were on-call, and often called-up more than once each night. Their rounds could last from five minutes to an hour or more, depending on the particular situation in the ward. During the many hours between rounds, the night senior had to rely on her training herself, and the speed with which the hospital switchboard operator could contact more experienced help when emergencies arose, or looked about to do so. ‘Bleepers’ for medical staff were only just coming into use; walkie-talkies non-existent. The telephone was the ward’s lifeline.

  In the three and a half months I was on nights in an acute orthopaedic villa, not infrequently, owing to the scarcity of registrars and housemen, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon did the night medical rounds on his own. ‘Makes me feel quite young again to be walking the wards, nurse, but by God, it’s even harder on the feet than I remembered. Right! Let’s take a look at the chaps and then their notes.’ (For some inexplicable reason, all consultant surgeons said ‘Right!’ and all consultant physicians ‘Good’ pronounced ‘Goooood!’).

  Once familiarity lessened awe, for a man of renowned talents both as an orthopaedic surgeon and lecturer, I regarded his rounds as a godsend. Though some nights he looked an old and not just middle-aged man, he was always willing to spare time for explaining in detail the patients’ case histories, his operative and post-operative techniques, modern advances in orthopaedic surgery in general, and as he had been for years a general surgical registrar before specializing, general surgery in general. My Hospital Surgery examination was fast approaching, but every morning in bed I fell asleep before I read half a page of my general surgical textbook and as always on nights did not waken until shaken in the evening in time to get into uniform. Being a night nurse throughout all our surgical lectures, I slept through most. That later I passed Surgery rather well was solely due to that consultant.

  Neither he nor our registrar and houseman – when we had either – were Thomas’s men, and nor was the Night Sister a Nightingale. They came from another London voluntary hospital, but their methods and attitude varied little from those to which I had become accustomed. ‘We chaps may wear different ties and you nurses different caps,’ said that consultant, ‘but we’re all much the same under the white starch just as we’re all much the same people we were before we put on the starch. Surgery, medicine, nursing – don’t change people. All they do is turn people into caricatures of themselves when young. Ergo, the callous young grow more callous, the kind, kinder, the wise, wiser – and the born bunglers bungle on to their eternal salvation and patients’ damnation.’

  My night junior was a VAD with two War Service stripes up who could jog-trot as fast as any Nightingale, was one of the hardest workers I ever met, and whatever the hour or the rush, was invariably able to provide mugs of hot strong tea in seconds.

  In Italy, Rome was still in German hands, the Allied landing at Salerno had met with formidable German resistance, and the still mounting British casualties were continuing to fill the homeward-bound hospital ships. In that villa (it was an officers’ ward), as in my hut ward, were men wounded in Italy, North Africa, ex-P.O.W.s, and a very few who had been in hospital beds since Dunkirk.

  It was a single-storey villa with two longis
h wards set either side of a small reception hall used as a night duty-room. By long-established tradition in 1943, the senior officers’ ward was known to patients and staff as ‘the west end’, and the junior (captains and under) as ‘the east end’. At the far end of both wards were two padded cells mainly reserved, in the absence of other side wards, for very senior officers – to the constant joy of the east end. One night after the casualty porters had removed themselves and their trolley from a padded cell and I helped into an operation gown a wounded Brigadier, he surveyed the padded walls and grinned weakly, ‘Pity my Brigade can’t see me now, nurse. Always said I’d come to this! If you don’t mind my asking – where precisely am I?’

  I kept being reminded of my hut ward. The blackout screens accentuated the reek of damp plaster and pus, entrapped the clouds of cigarette smoke and anaesthetic fumes lingering over the beds of the newly post-operative patients. There was the same intangible atmosphere of gaiety, the same outbursts of laughter, the same tolerance of each other, the same high proportion of the special courage required to withstand not short periods of acute pain, but long periods of acute and exhausting discomfort. And as in all servicemen’s wards, every officer had his special friend from his own unit who visited him whenever possible, but instead of these friends being called mates or oppos, most seemed to be called Nigel.

  The only thing I disliked was the tiredness. I infinitely preferred night to day work, and being able to nurse the same patients continuously for three months. It took less than the first month to develop the relationship with the whole ward that resulted in what was one of the most delightful sounds for any nurse to hear. It was the sound of a ward hauling itself up on its lifting straps, elbows, or feebly raising its head from a pillow to smile and chorus, ‘Here they are! Here come “our” night nurses!’ Often on day-duty a patient would label a nurse ‘my’ N. So-and-So. On night-duty it was always ‘Our night nurses’!

  Just as more babies were born at night, so did more patients die at night. In sickness and in health in the small pre-dawn hours the human body is at its lowest ebb, and so, very often, is the human spirit. None of my patients died during that night-duty, but several at different times were on the D.I.L., and more for longer periods on the S.I.L. In those small hours when every broken bone, every wound abscess, every heel, ankle, elbow, and back muscle ached beyond bearing, a hospital bed could be the loneliest place on earth. The lonely, everywhere, need to talk. In the darkness and in whispers, the British talk more easily. Talk of home, wives, children, girlfriends, civilian jobs, and war.

  ‘I thought they’d forgotten me, nurse. Three days and three nights I laid out there on that bloody sand. Got quite fond of the stuff by the end, only wanted to turn over and couldn’t. Some of the time I was a bit off my rocker, but all of the time I was bloody thirsty. Got hellish confusing. Chaps kept bending over me, heaving up my head, pouring water down my throat, and talking in different languages. English, Yank, German, English, German – lost count. Hellish confusing. Only realized later the bloody battle had been swaying backwards and forwards over yours truly.’

  ‘Tea’ll be great, but no sugar, thanks, nurse. Lost my taste for it in the bag. Had a bit of luck when they picked me up just outside Tobruk – when oh – July ’42 – as they picked up one of our M.O.s. Decent chap – brooded over us like dear old mum. Be in Germany now. Jerry shifted him out with the rest before my lot were swapped. Hope the war doesn’t last too long.’

  ‘Maybe your M.O. chum’ll escape?’

  ‘God, no, nurse! M.O.s can’t escape. They can’t leave the chaps. He’ll only get out of the bag when someone else unties the string.’

  Washing at dawn a young captain who had won a Military Cross and been badly wounded on the final day of the battle at El Alamein. ‘What was Alamein really like?’

  He thought this over with closed eyes whilst I dried his face. ‘Noisy, N. Andrews. Dead noisy.’

  We always washed the men unable to wash themselves before starting the general round of early morning teas, temperatures, dressings, washing and shaving bowls, rubbing of backs, heels, elbows, skin preps. and bed-making at 6 a.m. We were allowed to leave six of the twenty-eight beds to the day nurses. It took roughly twenty minutes to wash and re-make the bed of a man on traction or in heavy plasters and longer if surgical dressings were involved, and as we usually had ten to fourteen men to wash, never started later than 4 a.m. and often at three-thirty. The patients never objected. On the contrary.

  ‘Thank God for the rose-coloured dawn.’ A man in his mid-twenties who had last stood on his feet at Dunkirk thankfully sipped his pre-wash tea whilst I tied a red shade-cover over his bedhead lamp then screened his bed. The screens were red and he lay outstretched in a hip plaster in the red glow. ‘Heaven’ll reward you even if I don’t. Praying you’d do me first,’ he whispered. ‘In a muck sweat, am I. How did you know I was awake? I had my eyes closed.’

  ‘You stopped snoring, Mr …’

  ‘I never snore!’

  ‘Shush – please.’

  ‘Sorry. Just listen. I’ve a new quote for your collection – with apologies to The Burial Of Sir John Moore:

  She washed them softly at dead of night,

  The sods with her cold hands turning,

  By her ailing torch’s misty light,

  And the bedlamp dimly burning.’

  Every night when they were all asleep or trying to sleep, every twenty minutes round all the beds and from time to time stopping in the middle of either ward with my hand over my torchlight, listening to the varying rhythms of sleep. Mr A, quick and shallow; Captain B, a short snort every five or six breaths; Captain C, only a snore when about to wake up; Mr D, the heaviest snorer in both wards; Messrs E, F, G, H, I, all sleeping the soundless sleep of the boys they were only in age; Major J clicking his false teeth; Col K, muttering in sleep as always when his temperature was up. And woven amongst the snores, snorts, clicks, mutters, the occasional jangle of the lead weights as a patient on traction moved in sleep, the creaking of the leather straps under the mattress of the high orthopaedic beds; the distant chink of a glass on wood that meant the Major-General had woken in his padded cell.

  ‘Tea, nurse? Nectar! Busy night?’

  ‘Quite quiet. No convoys in tonight.’

  On the next convoy night: ‘Night Sister speaking, nurse. Five officers on their way to you. Yes, in emergency beds until your ward Sister rearranges her bedstate in the morning. The registrar will be round to see them directly he’s free. And your other patients? Very well. I’ll be round shortly.’

  Neither the registrar nor Night Sister had arrived when the VAD and I met briefly in our ward kitchen nearly two hours later. Her normally cheerful face was creased with distress. ‘I didn’t realize our admissions were more ex-P.O.W.s.’

  ‘Nor did I till I read their notes. Thanks for laying on the special cocoa and scrambled eggs. I know they’ve been trying to feed them up on the hospital ship, but they still look as if they haven’t had a square meal in years.’

  ‘Two of them wept all over their scrambled eggs. I felt so awful for them, and both, after I had mopped their faces, said they were only crying because they were so happy to be home. Happy. With legs and arms blown off.’

  ‘I know.’ I had to lean against the kitchen table. ‘You know that one I’ve been with this last hour? The commando captain? Shrapnel sliced his spine. Paraplegic. When I got him undressed he said he thought he’d better warn me he had a bit of a bedsore on his back and they seemed rather worried about it on the ship, but it hasn’t bothered him as he can’t feel anything. When I turned him over and took off the dressing, I couldn’t believe my eyes.’ I linked my fingers as if in prayer and held out my hands (size 6½ in theatre gloves). ‘The sore has made a hole deep enough for both my hands to go in like this up to the wrists without touching him. I had to measure as I didn’t think anyone would believe me if I just described it. I’ve never seen anything like it. Never wish to. Packin
g it used a new whole tin of tulle gras (medicated Vaseline gauze). I’ve settled him propped on one hip and we’ll have to keep turning him or he’ll get hip sores.’

  ‘He can’t feel anything?’

  ‘No feeling, no control from the waist down.’

  She leant against the table. ‘He looks quite young.’

  ‘He’s younger than he looks. Twenty-nine.’

  I was very upset about the captain and the other admissions. Being very upset and very tired, I spoke aloud the words that had been running through my head since I admitted the five men.

  ‘“But things like that, you know, must be,

  After a famous victory.”’

  ‘Come again?’

  We had worked together for two months.

  ‘Just the end of a verse I’m stuck with.’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘They say it was a shocking sight

  After the field was won;

  For many thousand bodies here

  Lay rotting in the sun;

  But things like that, you know, must be,

  After a famous victory.’

  And other things and other victories.

  One cold, wet afternoon in March 1944, I was back on day-duty, off from two to five, and riding back through the main gates at about four o’clock with my head down against the driving rain that had emptied the small roads of all but one khaki figure lumbering awkwardly and more sideways than forwards, towards me.

  ‘Don’t you know one of your old soldiers, N. Andrews?’

  I leapt off my still brakeless bicycle and recognized the man in the greatcoat, with collar upturned and jammed down service cap, with astonishment. ‘Sergeant! It’s you—’ I waved at his legs ‘no crutches and two legs!’

  It was the Regular Sergeant who had first told me about ice and cotton-wool. His face was still very thin, but a much better colour and beaming. ‘Bit of all right, eh nurse?’ We shook hands. ‘Just giving me new tin leg another practice run.’