Several men on the ward were on the edge of serious illness, but their laughter reminded Madge of the indomitable spirit shown by the wounded boys from the D-Day landings, when she was in Stoke Mandeville. They all knew that Madge would be in the Japanese POW ward the following morning so when she left at the end of her shift she gave them a huge smile and a few words from a Gracie Fields classic: ‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye . . .’ The laughter and applause, along with shouts of ‘be careful’, rang in her ears as she headed towards her basha.
Madge was going to be amongst the first on duty in the new ward. She had never actually set eyes on a Japanese soldier before, let alone nursed one, and she was interested to see what they looked like. She was still smiling over the day’s mischief that had taken place in the BOR ward when she met up with Vera for a late afternoon pot of tea on the eve of the big day.
‘Those boys,’ she told Vera, ‘are always up to monkey business, but they’re a lot of fun!’
‘I know, they are cheeky,’ Vera replied. ‘But they make what we do worthwhile, don’t they?’
‘They most definitely do,’ Madge agreed.
That night Madge washed her hair and checked that her uniform for the following day had been ironed. She gave her lace-up shoes one last polish and thought about spelling out her thoughts in a letter home to Mum and her sisters, but decided instead to write after her first day on the POW ward. Normally one of the last things she would do before bedding down for the night was to scribble a few notes in the diary that she had restarted in Kirkee after disembarking from the Strathnaver in Bombay, but the security briefing she had attended about the arrival of the Japanese made her wonder if it was sensible to continue.
Madge read back over some of her entries and decided that there wasn’t a single thing that would be of interest to anybody other than her sisters and Mum. There was a bit about a dog that she knew the family would enjoy, but couldn’t possibly be interpreted as a security risk. Sapper was a loveable, mischievous Alsatian with one blue and one brown eye and a floppy right ear. He was owned by the Mess Secretary of HQ Movements, known to all as Flossie Dirkin. Sapper’s greatest joy in life came after a dinner or dance at the mess because he always got a doggy bag full of juicy, meaty treats that he wolfed down within seconds. How could that cause problems? Madge asked herself. Nevertheless, she decided that with the enemy just a few hundred yards away she should discontinue her diary keeping. She’d just have to remember every detail so she could tell Doris, Doreen and Mum all about her adventures when she got home, whenever that might be.
The following morning Madge was determined to look as pristine and efficient as possible for her first day with the Japanese so she checked her uniform and hair one last time before heading over to have breakfast with Vera, who had been earmarked for service in another ward that day. They discussed the order that these POWs must be listed as numbers only.
‘It seems almost inhuman,’ said Vera.
‘But there’s really nothing else we can do,’ Madge pointed out. ‘Nearly all of them are refusing to give their names.’
After breakfast Vera and Madge walked together to their shift but were stopped in their tracks by a scene that was unfolding at the bottom of the hill around the POW wards. To the right, a squad of British soldiers, rifles glistening in the early morning sun, marched in unison towards the troop of Gurkhas, who had been on duty through the night guarding the Japanese. The nurses were still a considerable distance away, but because he was so tall Madge instantly recognised Big Arthur in the British contingent, and she found comfort in the giant Yorkshireman’s presence. As they got closer they overheard the last few words of the troop’s briefing. Though they had gathered in a rugby-style huddle, Madge distinctly heard the term ‘court martial’ being repeated and knew that if the guards laid so much as a finger on the prisoners they could be in for the high jump.
Vera attempted to relieve the pressure as they headed towards the ward by announcing that she had learned to speak Japanese and when Madge challenged her to say something in the alien tongue she indignantly replied ‘Tokyo!’ It was an awful joke, but both girls laughed before going their separate ways.
‘Eyup, Madge.’ Big Arthur, who was assigned to accompany Nurse Graves on her rounds, introduced her to his fellow guard, Joseph, a particularly tough-looking Scouser from Liverpool. Madge looked at her heavily armed bodyguards and felt reassured by their presence. Right, let’s do this, Madge said to herself. They stepped into the ward together.
Already the temperature was over 85 degrees Fahrenheit and a thoroughly unpleasant smell was permeating from within the ward. The odour was so awful Madge initially thought it might be gangrene. Then it dawned on her that the smell was nothing to do with gangrene, it was just the stench of so many men stuck in the heat with the shutters closed.
The ward was surprisingly quiet and she was keenly aware that twenty-eight sets of enemy eyes were monitoring her every step and movement. Big Arthur, hand resting lightly on the Lee Enfield rifle that was slung across his shoulders, stayed close to Madge as she got her bearings in a ward full of tiny and very emaciated Japanese prisoners of war. She found it difficult to associate the atrocities carried out
