Not all aspects of life at the hospital went as smoothly as the work, though. Her very first shift just happened to fall on the day after the weekly issue of hospital rations. Nurses were given a little string bag which contained portions of sugar, jam, margarine and bread to be eaten as snacks. But when Madge went to collect her allocation there was only dry bread left, and no sugar, which was important to her!
Feeling somewhat dumbfounded, and incredibly hungry, she asked the storekeeper, ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance I could have a little pot of jam as an advance on next week’s rations, could I?’
‘Sorry, miss, there’s nothing I can do because rules is rules,’ he said with a pompous sniff, and proceeded to dunk a biscuit in the cup of tea he was slurping behind the counter.
Madge was far too shy to ask other nurses if she could borrow some jam and margarine, so she ended up eating dry bread until the following week’s rations were handed out. At least I know the system now, she thought. I won’t let that happen again!
After just a few weeks treating civilians, Madge was secretly relieved when the head nurse took her aside and said she would be transferred to the services section of the hospital. It was really just a hop across the corridor so Madge didn’t think it could be that different and was surprised when she realised that the EMS nurses, which made up the majority, were mostly much older than her. She was in the middle of her first rounds when a tall, broad sister with a heavily starched white cap pulled well down over her forehead and rosy-red cheeks marched into the ward like a ship in full sail. Madge stopped still with her mouth open.
‘Right then, you must be Graves,’ the sister said with an Irish accent. ‘I see you’ve got yourself stuck in already so you’ll do fine here, eh? You can call me Sister Crowley.’
Madge soon noticed that she was not the only one in awe of Sister Crowley’s presence. Whenever she walked into a room not only the nurses but also the patients, whether soldiers, sailors or airmen, would fall quiet.
Sister Crowley’s height and demeanour might have been intimidating but she had a twinkle in her eye and Madge learned that as long as you did what was asked, Sister Crowley wouldn’t give you any grief. Her ward had to be the best in the hospital, in the country even, and that meant the nurses had a lot to live up to. Sister Crowley made endless, exhaustive checks on the ward inventory and if so much as a flannel was missing a major inquiry would begin and every nurse would be quizzed until the item was accounted for.
She was a stickler for process and insisted that all patients should be tightly tucked in. The open ends of pillowcases had to be pointing away from the ward door and if the sheets’ hospital-style corners weren’t absolutely perfect, the beds had to be made again. Everything had to be spick and span for Matron’s round. Or else!
Madge smiled when Victoria, another trainee, told her that there was no Christmas Day respite for nurses on Sister Crowley’s ward. Instead they were instructed to make sure it was ‘the best decorated and happiest in the whole hospital’. Not even the young doctors dared to argue with her once they had been told it was their turn to carve the turkey. She made it clear to everyone that the patients came first under all circumstances.
The demands of ‘HMS Crowley’, as the girls nicknamed her, were the furthest thing from Madge’s mind some weeks later as dawn began to rise after an exhausting night on the men’s surgical ward, one of ten wards in the services section of the hospital. It was one of her favourites because even though many of the soldiers were recovering from serious injuries they were endlessly cheerful.
Even at the end of a busy shift, Madge still had a long list of tasks to complete. Many patients needed help to wash and there could be thirty in the ward with only Madge to look after them. On one particular night she realised she didn’t know where to begin – bedpans and bottles had to be cleaned and sterilised, temperatures needed to be taken and tea and toast for breakfast prepared. Madge sighed as she remembered sitting in the kitchen with her mum, eating bread crusts, which Lily always described as ‘chef’s treat’ because of the work she had put in. On this occasion Madge had over a hundred slices of bread to cut but there was no one around to distract her from the boring job. At least there was a very large and sharp bread knife which should hopefully make the job a little quicker and easier.
Even though dawn had passed, Madge kept the ward’s lights off so patients could get as much sleep as possible. Suddenly the sound of footsteps, unusual at that time in the morning, made her look up and there, silhouetted in the doorway of the kitchen, was a patient who seemed disturbingly agitated. Madge recognised him as a man who had previously shown signs of instability after being brought in to hospital suffering from shrapnel wounds sustained on a raid in northern France. Eyes bulging, he marched over, shouting and yelling as he demanded the knife.
She had dealt with rude and grumpy patients before but never anything like this. Stepping back, she stuttered, ‘W-w-w-would you like a cup of tea?’
Madge kicked herself mentally for the question but before she could move, the soldier
