L.O. was a jolly soul who cheered everybody up and teased Madge mercilessly. A few weeks after he’d been admitted he appeared just before her lunch break dressed in his army khakis, looking a different man to the weary and dispirited character who had been carried in on a stretcher.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you for saving me, memsahib,’ he said in his Cockney accent as he bowed his head. Then from behind his back he handed Madge a beautiful bouquet of deep red roses wrapped in brown paper before picking up his few possessions and walking up the hill.
Madge felt a lump in her throat as she watched him go. She put the roses in a jug of water and later took them with her to lunch in the nurses’ mess where she had arranged to meet Vera.
After listening intently to Madge recounting what had happened, Vera gave a mock swoon and said, ‘Ooh, it sounds to me just like an episode straight from Mills and Boon.’
Madge ignored the interruption and picked up the deep red blooms. ‘What a kind and thoughtful gesture. He must have walked all the way in to Chittagong to buy them for me,’ she said.
By this time Vera was laughing uncontrollably and pointed to the bush on the veranda. ‘Your cheeky chappy has only gone and pinched them from here!’ she said.
At the end of her busy day shift, Madge returned to the nurses’ mess to discover that Miss Corsar had arrived. The VAD liaison officer kindly poured Madge a cup of tea and then offered a plate of biscuits. She was holding a meeting in a room away from the main dining area and within twenty minutes everybody was in place. The esteem in which Miss Corsar was held was underlined by the attendance of Lieutenant Colonel Whittaker, who asked politely if it would be in order for him to listen in.
Gertrude, a very different figure in khaki from the Red Cross uniform she had worn on the Strathnaver, told the hospital chief he would be most welcome, walked over to the door and locked it. ‘Security purposes,’ she said after receiving one or two inquisitive glances, then started by outlining how the group had been split once they got off the ambulance train in Calcutta.
‘Quite a few,’ she said, ‘are working with the 14th Army and all of you are divided between eleven very busy hospitals, where the matrons have been highly impressed with the enthusiasm and professionalism that has been shown under conditions which are often little better than primitive. The turnover of patients in the eight forward area hospitals is particularly high, as the figures here at 56 IGH have shown. Nobody knows just how busy this hospital has become better than you girls, of course,’ said Gertrude, in a comment that was greeted with numerous nods and smiles. ‘The other three hospitals to which VADs have been posted are further west in Ranchi and Dacca.
‘I have been shown the bashas in which you are living here at 56 IGH and seventy-five per cent of all VADs are in similar accommodation. Many have to use hurricane lamps because there is no electricity available and few have running water. One unit is sleeping in tents,’ she said, ‘whereas the lucky few are in more substantial buildings.
‘Of far more importance,’ Miss Corsar underlined, ‘is the question of safety on night duty and the strain that it places on you nurses, who at various points are looking after more than a hundred patients at a time.
‘One girl even has three hundred patients in three separate blocks, with just a night sister on duty with her apart from the nursing sepoys, who are prone to fall asleep themselves.’ There were a few giggles at this point.
‘Please talk to me later,’ she said, ‘if any of you are worried about safety on night shifts and don’t hesitate to write if you run into any other problems.’
‘Security is the least of our worries at 56 IGH,’ Madge whispered to Vera, because she had become fond of the Gurkhas who guarded the complex, and British army soldiers maintained a high profile outside the basha wards.
After twenty minutes there was a short break in which Miss Corsar again made sure everybody had tea and happily walked round with plates of biscuits. Madge thought she came across as the mother hen of her widely spread flock. ‘I really like her,’ whispered Vera and Madge nodded in agreement as the second session got underway.
Miss Corsar began with a compliment about how impressed a number of matrons were with the way in which Indian soldiers had been nursed. ‘My overall view is that you are doing a magnificent job under the most testing of conditions. I am visiting as many hospitals as possible to reassure you nurses that far from being forgotten, your sheer enthusiasm has ensured a warm welcome and the number who have volunteered to work closer to the battle zone is also very impressive indeed,’ she added.
She thanked them all for attending and being so attentive and said she was pleased to hear that their social life in Chittagong was such a lot of fun. As one last word of advice, she added, ‘But please don’t worry about turning down invitations. Everybody knows just how hard you have to work in the basha wards, which are not air conditioned, and lots of late nights on top of that can lead to tiredness. If you get run down in this heat, it can also lead to illness. So just learn to say no!’
Laughter and applause followed as Miss Corsar walked across to unlock the door and the VADs went slowly through to the dining room, many of them by now desperate for more food as they had been up and on the go since early that morning.
‘What did you think of the
