Sets of medication had been laid out in the shade of the veranda and a quick check of the contents confirmed that the majority of the patients were suffering from malaria, dysentery, combat wounds, malnutrition or a combination of the afflictions. A doctor had spent considerable time on the ward over the past two days and diagnosed most of the illnesses, but even without his notes Madge would have identified the fact that patient number one was seriously ill with malaria. He was sweating profusely and shaking so much that she was reminded of the scenes with her father back in Dover. Inevitably she didn’t receive even a nod of the head in thanks after giving him treatment, but rather strangely she thought she saw a flicker of gratitude in his eyes.
Madge moved on to the next bed whose occupant seemed to be little more than a human skeleton. The doctor’s notes said that he was suffering from dysentery and malnutrition and his little arms looked like sparrow’s legs. The noise of the guards clumping up in their British army beetle crushers woke him from what was the deepest of sleeps and for a moment it looked as if he was going to make a protest, but he simply didn’t have the energy. Instead he lay stricken as Madge administered large doses of medication.
It had been the most glorious, sun-drenched start to the day when Madge walked down from breakfast with Vera from the nurses’ mess, but within an hour clouds had begun to gather, the wind had started to shriek and another downpour was threatening. The humidity was unbearable and as she continued her rounds the odour within the ward became so extreme it was a relief when the rain actually started.
Madge’s next patient had an amputated arm in addition to a number of shrapnel wounds and a respiratory infection. He didn’t speak English and she didn’t speak Japanese, but Madge’s smile seemed to calm the somewhat agitated young man. Because beads of perspiration were standing out on his forehead she gently mopped his brow and helped him drink a glass of water. Next she prepared to administer a penicillin injection. When the inside of his one arm was swabbed and the needle was about to be inserted he turned his head away before flicking it back to very carefully spit in Madge’s face.
All hell broke loose as the lethargic morning calm turned within seconds to a bear pit. Rain splattered on the roof of the basha and the shutters creaked and groaned in the howling wind. Madge stepped back and turned to the guards with green phlegm dripping from her eyebrow, across her nose and onto the white apron of her uniform. All the noise from outside failed to drown out the roar of anger that could be heard from inside the ward.
‘Disgusting! Utterly disgusting!’ roared Big Arthur.
He had moved to protect Madge from any second assault and he let loose a stream of obscenities that could be heard the length of the hospital. Joe, a veteran of the Saturday night action that took place at throwing-out time in the pubs on Scotland Road, stood with his back against a wall, waving his Lee Enfield in a 180-degree arc to dissuade the rest of the POWs from getting involved. He had made an extravagant display of pretending to remove the safety catch.
Both British guards had been warned that morning that they would face a court martial if unnecessary violence was inflicted on the prisoners and Big Arthur took exceptional care not to lay so much as a finger on the one-armed ‘little ****’, who had responded to Madge’s compassion in such a foul way. Instead, he kicked the underside of the bed with his size 12 British army boots with such enormous power that the bottom two legs became momentarily airborne. The patient squealed with fright. That started the other POWs shouting and yelling and there was bedlam. Only when a group of Gurkhas walked through, hands casually on their kukris, did it all calm down. Big Arthur was mortified that he had let the incident take place and apologised time and time again to Madge ‘for using such bad language in front of a lady’.
‘Nobody could have seen that coming and you are absolutely not to blame,’ she told him.
Instead of retreating from the fray, Madge took a thirty-minute break to clean up and went back to the ward to nurse other POWs who had been committed to her care. Unfortunately it happened again and again but there was little that could be done to stop the practice, other than to be very watchful when attending her patients. It’s not much fun, basically being used as a spittoon, she thought.
After such an awful day, Madge decided to have an early night and sat down to write a lengthy letter to Mum and the girls. She decided not to include a single word about the spitting so as not to worry the family. Instead the letter told how fond she was becoming of Basil and the fun they had at dances and dinners. Doris and Doreen would love him and I just wish you could meet him, Mum, she wrote.
The following day Madge was called to a meeting with Matron Ferguson and other hospital officials to talk about the best way of dealing with the Japanese patients, who had again been spitting at nurses. It was generally agreed that Madge’s idea of wearing surgical face masks and tight-fitting caps was worth trying.
That evening Madge met Basil in Chittagong for an early drink and she told him about the difficulties she and the other nurses had been having. He gave
