Page 15 - QARANC Vol 14 No 7 2013

officers] had all of us and our luggage organised. The Frontier Mail, a train went once daily from the port to the Afghan border. We same 4 were allocated a cabin for our long journey. For meals we got off at a station, our cabin locked and we went to the dining car and stayed there until the next station when we returned to our cabin. Just occasionally we stopped and got off to go to a restaurant.
At every station where QA’s were getting off the
Matron and CO were there to meet them looking so good in immaculate white uniforms. We did not make such a good impression as ours were very creased from having been in a trunk for more than 3 weeks. We eventually arrived in Nowshera on a Tuesday evening. It was a very small town but a large garrison. The Dorsets were leaving and our companions the South Staffs were taking over. Nowshera was a Sheik depot so there were many Sheik regiments. We were met by Matron Miss Kersley and the CO. We were taken to a lovely mess with wide lawns and a garden, it was a 10 minute walk to the hospital so the mess had its own tonga and horse.
Our accommodation was spacious, a sitting room bit with a fire place, bedroom and bathroom. All messes in India were built to the same pattern and designed to keep out the heat and mosquitoes. The bathroom was not one as we know it, a cement floor and a zinc bath and of course a thunder box. There was a hole in the wall so when you had bathed tip the bath and the water runs out of the hole. The bathrooms had 2 doors one to your room and one to outside. When you go into the bathroom you lock the door to outside and when you leave, unlock it go into your room and then lock that door. That allows the “sweeper” to empty the water and the thunderbox. For your bath he supplies boiling water in carriers which had been heated on a kerosene stove.
Our hospital had up to 150 patients mostly from shooting incidents and training accidents. When I first arrived we had British military orderlies but they were soon withdrawn and sent to Europe, replaced with locally trained Anglo/Indians. The 2i/c was Anglo/Indian and he took charge of all local employees and dealt with all such as blood tests. He had a lot of responsibility, especially as all staff lived within the compound. There were no telephones and everything was ordered with a “chit.” Of course we didn’t have time to take chits anywhere so used local small boys paying them a few annas. I remember I was put on night duty [the only night sister] on my 3rd day in post.
Matron had had a boyfriend who was a Major in an Indian Gunner Regt he had been posted and she spent every day running to the post waiting for a letter. I think that she was doomed to be one of life’s spinsters.
Wounds did not heal in the hot season and patients were sent to the Hill Station hospital. This meant an ambulance journey to Rawalpindi and then an overnight stay before leaving on the daily 6.00 am transport ambulance. Escort duty for this was lovely. We all took a turn so that most staff got to spend some time in the hills at Murray Hill Station. The main Garrison moved there annually during the hot season.
I stayed at Nowshera from March to May and then was sent to Murray Hill Station as the Theatre sister for a month, back to Nowshera until July and then Murray again. The hill station
was built on
terraces on the
hill-side with the mess a steep walk above the hospital. Motor transport was not allowed as the roads were too narrow. All ambulances stopped at the depot at the bottom and it was rickshaw from there. On my second tour there I shared a room with Bessie Coward and our room looked over Everest. How wonderful is that?
We looked after quite a number of troops with polio and we had breathing machines which were made locally. Of course there was no power for them and they were pumped manually by troops 24/7 working in shifts. One soldier who I still remember was Lt Tommy Lockwood of the Dorset Regt. He had been wounded by Afghans and had the most terrible shoulder injury. It was a real mess and the surgeons were not really able to do much. After the war my husband and I came to live in Dorset and I visited him. There had been no real improvement. We had quite a few convalescing troops from Burma but no real war wounds. We had very little news of WW2 proper.
Q Do you feel that you missed out?
A Yes we never know what was going on at home and I never heard an air raid siren go off. If I hadn’t been married I would have liked to have worked on the troop evacuation boats in Bangladesh.
Q So tell me about meeting your husband...
A I met my husband in 1941 in Kashmir. He was a Signals Officer on leave after being unwell. He fell asleep at the wheel and went over the cliff edge caught the only tree for miles and broke his jaw. We were married at Poona in 1943. I bought silk and had my wedding dress made, the veil however was passed around and used for every wedding. I carried on working until 6 months pregnant with my daughter Anne in 1944.
After our wedding we were then at Rawalpindi and I was allowed by my Matron, Miss Clark to live in my husband’s bungalow providing that I kept a room in the Mess and paid my Mess Bill. I continued to work in theatres here. The kit was very old and sterilization was on a primus stove very unsure of the sterility of things. When surgeons went to the out stations they often took some of the equipment with them so that we didn’t always have everything we needed.
We returned to UK in 1946 and my husband continued in Royal Signals.
Mary continues to live in her own bungalow in Weymouth, her grandson, a junior officer in Royal Engineers has recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan.