But the war was
calling us. Although teaching was supposed to be a reserved occupation
three of us younger ones, Audrey, Janet the cello teacher, and I gave
in our notices and left. Audrey and Janet both joined the war office to
do office work and I 'trained' as a V.A.D. i.e. had to pass simple
exams in nursing and first aid and do 50 hours work on hospital wards.
My 50 hours were done at the Royal Berkshire in Reading as I was living
at home in Wokingham. The work ranged from doing long bedpan rounds to
helping sister treat a dying cancer patient; from washing walls to
washing patients. One of my patients was a boy of about eleven and when
I was washing his face I was ribbed by the men in the beds nearby for
washing behind his ears! Do men never wash behind their ears?!
In the summer of 1941, after a spell of so-called nursing at Bisham
Abbey, I was detailed to join the Navy and started work at the Royal
Naval Hospital in Chatham. Imagine my surprise on walking past the
walls and through the wrought-iron gates to see a white-flannelled
cricket match in progress on a fine stretch of lawn in front of the
staff houses. Nursing in such a male dominated environment was an
eye-opening experience: entering from a sheltered, middle class
background into the melting pot of all sorts and conditions of men.
Very educational!
After a few months on the wards I was given a short training in the
physio department for the purpose of giving ultraviolet treatment in
the naval barracks. There, in the Admiralty gardens, an underground
system of offices had been built in order to protect the top-secret
coding and such-like work from enemy bombing and it was considered that
the personnel needed a programme of ultraviolet treatment to compensate
for loss of sunlight. I was billeted out with a petty officer and his
wife in nearby Gillingham and went every day past the guards to my
underground rooms, one for the men and WRENS to undress and the other
containing the large ultraviolet lamp in the middle where I gave them
their series of treatments. It was an interesting experience but after
six months I was fed up with the loneliness of working entirely on my
own and asked to be taken back to the hospital.
After a short time on the wards I was sent, as a guinea pig again, on
night duty to an isolated building called Zymotics, which was a male
only establishment, the nurses being only male sick bay attendants
because the patients all had infectious diseases such as T.B. and
syphilis. But there was one night sister who did her rounds there every
two hours and she had asked for a VAD to accompany her. And that was
all I did!
In October 1942 I was drafted to Seaforth Naval hospital in Liverpool,
with our VAD digs in Waterlooville. Liverpool being not far from
Parkgate in the Wirral I got in touch with Janet's parents. She was my
friend from St Brandon days. I used to stay with them for my short
weekends (the long ones spent in Templecombe) and often met Janet's
mother in Liverpool to enjoy going with her to chamber concerts and to
the theatre on a Monday night when free where two could go for the
price of one. She and her husband were dears.
At the end of July a handful of us from Liverpool joined nearly a
hundred other V.A.D.s to board S.S.Rangitata for a posting to Durban in
S.Africa. We and a handful of Army sisters going to India and a few
lady missionaries going to China were the only females, the other two
thousand or so being troops from various forces and countries. Our
first port of call was the Clyde where our convoy of sixteen ships was
assembling. Our ship had another on our left and two to our right with
a line of four in front and two lines of four behind. Away on the
horizon we could see our watchdogs - the naval destroyers. It was an
amazing experience. All the ships kept the same distance apart and
would turn together, so zigzagging almost across the Atlantic, avoiding
the coastal route. It took us five weeks to reach Cape Town. In the
tropics it was so hot in our 6 berth cabins, blacked out at night of
course, that our leader asked if those who wanted could sleep on deck.
The captain gave his permission on condition that we were guarded by a
marine! The hard deck and the clump of his boots made sleeping more
difficult but to lie awake and gaze on the tropical starry night with
the masts lazily swinging against it was totally enchanting; as was
leaning against the railing in the day time watching the flying fish
and porpoises and at night the phosphorescence made by the ship cutting
through the waters.
The naval hospital in Durban that we were bound for was still in the
building stage. It was considered to be needed because it was thought
that the Japanese would capture Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and so flood the
Indian Ocean with their submarines. We V.A.D.s therefore were sent to
live in a hotel in the coastal bush a few miles north of the city.
There we stayed for three months, sunbathing, sea bathing, and being
entertained by kindly local people. Two wonderful holidays stick in my
mind. One was at Christmas staying at my King's friend Joyce's farm
with her father and aunt and later, Joyce herself, near
Harrismith in the Orange Free State. They advised me to keep quiet
whenever visiting the town, even about coming from Durban, a very
pro-British city, let alone Britain, Harrismith being a centre of
pro-German Boers. Another fantastic holiday later was going with my
friends Sheila and Frances by train to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and staying
in the Victoria Falls Hotel. It was in July because that is a month
when the Zambezi river is not so full that little can be seen for the
spray as the river, 1¼ miles across, plunges into the narrow ravine
below, nor so empty that it becomes a small series of trickles. From
there we continued our train journey to the Kruger National Park to see
all its wonderful wild animals.
1943 S Africa, at friend Joyce's home farm in Harrismith
Canadian Air Force Boy friend Jack seated in middle - proposal rejected, killed in Far East
In November 1944 I received a letter from my mother telling me about
Gordon's death on a railway line so I immediately asked for
compassionate leave to go home and be demobbed. That was quickly
granted and I arrived back in December to a freezing snowy Liverpool
and an unheated six hour train journey sustained by a dry emergency
food pack but nothing to drink. Then on to Templecombe. Doris' memoriesDoris' reflections on school and college