RE Blog

Back to the top…

Skip to…

• Tuesday April 3rd 1945

Mum’s Wartime Diary – 1945

Tuesday, April 3rd 1945

Looking back through this small book makes me feel a hardened war veteran already – Bayeux, Rouen, and Ghent – France and Belgium already, and maybe Germany and Burma to come!

We arrived at Oostakter, Ghent, on Dec 2nd after a fairly comfortable though rather tedious train journey. Peggy and I were delegated to the Sisters’ care again while travelling and spent the first few days after our arrival in their mess at the Convent.

We revolted against it almost every moment, though of course we recognised its necessity. The endless and pointless tittle-tattle and petty gossip which is the sole source of conversation got our backs up and irritated us beyond endurance. Yet I can well imagine that we should be doing just the same thing if we had lived amongst them for many months on end. Anyway, we got shifted across to the unsavoury little pub serving as the Officers’ Mess after a few days and settled into our cosy little bedroom on the top floor, with good old cheerful Jock McClean to “mother” us, and we have been installed there (and very comfortably housed all things considered) ever since – 4 months already!

From the moment of our arrival we liked the face of Ghent, and we haven’t changed our minds. The town is old and has some beautiful buildings; the shops are numerous and well-stocked and the people friendly and full of good spirits, not like the depression of people and place in Rouen.

The hospital at first depressed us, for it was so obviously unsuited for a hospital – at least the old block was, and that was where the medical division wards were to be. Alterations, adaptions and innovations got done slowly and are still going on, but the first lot of patients arrived within a fortnight or so of our arrival. I started off with D Ward , one of the old and unheated rooms, with no duty bunk and no kitchen worth the name, and sister McKeoun, whom I had at Rouen and would have like to have been spared! Very soon I was given Ward J at the top of the old block, but a much better ward and Sister Peche, who was an old friend of Bayeux days. But I never got the chance of settling even there, but got shifted again to F Ward, still general medical, and then got Ward E, the infections ward, and one of the best on the medical side. I thoroughly enjoyed myself there and it was too good to last, for one fateful afternoon a month ago Col. Jones said he was the bearer of bad news – I was to be loaned to the Surgical Division which was very short of M.O.s.

So for the past few weeks I have been coping as best I could with Ward 6, the big P.O.W. Ward with 120 beds, which are never empty for long and never filled by the same patients for more than a few days at a time. It has been hectic at times, but not all the time and the main hectic-ness has been in writing up documents and rushing rapidly round new cases when convoys have arrived.It hasn’t involved much clinical work and I have been more than a little depressed at times,longing to get back into the medical wards to be a doctor and not a clerk. Still, as Peggy said, “it has got to be done and someone must do it”, so on the whole I have tackled it with resignation and as much goodwill as I could muster.

Now I am for the moment leading a bone-lazy existance, doing temporary duty on an ambulance train outside Ghent, at Medbreak. I arrived here yesterday morning and goodness knows when or if the train will go on its next trip. Meanwhile there is nothing to do but relax, and that I am finding rather boring than restful. This morning I went with “Percy” – Miss Percival – into Ghent and made some useful purchases of handkerchiefs and stockings at the officers shop and tomorrow if possible I shall try to get back to No. 6 for the clinical meeting there, and to collect my letters – I want especially to get Mum’s letter because she will have just heard about my coming leave on April 23rd and I’m hoping to read what she had to say about it!

Besides work, the last few months have of course been eventful in other ways. Many M.O.s have come and gone, and they are still coming and going frequently. Pop Sanderson went to a Field Hygiene Section. Major Isaac, Lewis, Lucas< Bobby Morton and others have gone forward to Burma and Pop Elliott to a ?? Depot. Peggy and I got a terrific shock about 3 or 4 weeks ago for we received warning that we were to go to the Far East in March – we had a medical exam and spent a week in a weird daze, unable either to believe or disbelieve in the prospect of such an imminent and drastic change. However, after about a week we heard that the ;postings had been cancelled and we came to life again and resumed normal activities with renewed energy. Luckily we had decided not to tell our families until things had been really settled, so they still don’t know how near they were to saying goodbye to us for several more years – it may happen yet, and we had to complete a form about length of foreign service the other day, so perhaps the great adventure was only postponed for a month or two after all.

Although I am officially on the surgical side my loyalties all belong to the physicians, and whatever happens I down tools on Saturday morning and go along for the clinical round from 11 to 12; and enjoy every moment of it – I think it keeps me alive from one weekend to the next! I still read my Lancets and BMJs in the M.O.s room in the evenings so I still see the Office Boys and Col. Jones nearly every day and keep up our bantering in the old style, and all enjoy it. Col. Jones was given the OBE the other week and was simply delighted, and never ever tried to conceal the fact! He is much easier to talk to now and I’m not so frightened of him as I used to be, though my respect for him is even greater than ever, I think. Drury is still “with us”, and a medical specialist “trainee” (so are Grainger and Robertson, the new man, and Pop Elliott before he left.) Dru has done about 2 months now and so has another month and then I’m afraid he may be posted and that would be a great pity, for he is one of the few remaining “old originals” and one of the nicest people in the mess. Major Cameron is still here, though he volunteered for the Far East several months ago and has been promised that he will be going.

A new lady M.O. – Morley – arrived about a week ago and we had met her and liked her at 121 when we were billeted at Bayeux. She could not be nicer or easier to live with; we really are awfully lucky. A third woman might have spoilt things, but she will help and even now she is company for Peggy while I am on this outpost of the Empire. Enough for the moment.

Goodnight!

Back to the top…

• Sunday, February 6th 1944 From Halifax to No. 6 GH in Wales
• A New Diary Book A new smaller exercise book for keeping a diary during the journey across wartime France
• 3rd September 1944 (Bayeux)
• 2nd December 1944 (Rouen)

Back to the top…

Sunday, June 23rd, 1940

Mum’s Wartime Diary – Part 1

Sunday Feb 6th 1944

What criminal mind said that coming events cast their shadows before them? No shadow warned me of the posting that sent me post-haste to my present location – Dynevor Castle Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire. It was an immediate W.O. (War Office) posting which came out of the blue last Monday morning, and on Tuesday afternoon I departed from Halifax, lock stock and barrel, and sad I was to say goodbye to it and to all he friends I had made there during one and a half years.

But if I had known to what I was coming, I would have been even sadder. “6 General Hospital, Dynevor Castle, Llandeilo” sounded grand, and I was fully expecting a large hospital in full working order, and was determined to enjoy it. My enthusiasm cooled a little when I got to the end of a half-mile drive and saw a tented camp before the castle; but even so I thought a tented hospital might be quite enjoyable as long as I lived in the castle myself.

But the castle itself turned out to be almost derelict, dirty and unfurnished and far from homely. It transpired that there were no patients and indeed no hospital except on paper, and that most of the staff were away on leave. I was, in fact, the only female in the place and there was no work and no prospect of work for some time – I had rushed away in a tearing hurry, to a deserted camp where everyone spent the day twiddling their thumbs, eating and walking the countryside (in bitter cold). There were about a dozen M.O.s there when I arrived and there are a few more now, and Matron and one sister have returned and relieved me of the onus of being the only female in the place. But there is still nothing to do and, worse than that, no inkling of what lies ahead.

The unit has just returned from thre and a half years in the Middle East and nearly everyone in the camp is wearing the Africa Star, which makes me feel very new and raw in comparison. The men are fairly friendly, but I don’t think they approve much of the intrusion of female M.O.s into their mess – and I can understand that, though I don’t benefit from it. The other female M.O., whose arrival should have occurred several days ago, shows no sign of showing up and I am half-longing and half-dreading meeting her. If she is friendly then we could make things much easier for each other; if she is not then it may be rather miserable both now and later on.

Still, I hope on; things may yet turn out alright and if we get posted from here to a pleasant site and she is a pleasant person I may yet live to be glad of this ominous posting. It is hard to fill up the time of waiting without getting depressed and bored. I have luckily brought the two volumes of Rousseu’s Confessions with me – books I have been meaning to read for some months past, and just the thing for the present circumstances. Already I have nearly finished Volume I and am enjoying it very much indeed. Bless books – they ca be relied upon to remove one from any undesirable environment at a moment’s notice!

I hope there will be more cheery news when I write next.

Goodnight!

New book: August 1944 to April 1946

August 3, 1944 Normandy

Back to the top…

I can’t remember exactly when I wrote my diary last, but this new book begins a new experience, and promises to be the most exciting so far.

September 1, 1944

That last entry turned out to be a very much aborted effort. I hope this will be better, though I can hardly hope to do more than just sketch the things that have happened recently or else just describe a small part of them have the time.

Anyway I will begin with the time when I went to Newport from Llandeilo, because that was where I left my last entry I think. At Newport, where I stayed for about three or four months, I was at first at the Barracks – a very big place with an officers mess of about 40 or 50, beautifully organised and better fed than any other mess I have been in. But I wasn’t happy there a bit and never got to know anybody except sister Case and one of the A.B. officers who was equally a misfit there. After about ten days I went to Woolaston House EMS (Emergenvcy Medical Services) hospital and settled down happily, the only khaki doctor on the staff and thinking myself a civilian again. There the permanent staff was small – Dr Nathalian(?), Dr Beswick, Dr Griffiths, Dr Evans and Dr Gibbons. I didn’t really feel any great affinity for any of them, but I got out on well with them all and thoroughly enjoyed the work – even the ENT and other jobs with which I was saddled – it was all excellent experience.

Another advantage was that I managed to get back home at weekends nearly every week, until all leave and passes were stopped early in April.

In June I was recalled to number six but managed to wangle a night at home on the way. As soon as I arrived at Llandeilo I was told that I had a temporary posting to Queen Alexandria Hospital at Cosham near Portsmouth and was to leave at 10 AM the next morning! I picked up an A.V. battledress jacket and trousers, beret cap, revolver and sundry other garments from the quartermaster stores and scooted off again, breaking the journey at Bristol again for the night.

At Portsmouth I first encountered army surgery for I arrived there two days before D day (June 6th) and for three weeks we got the casualties straight from Normandy.

It was a most useful preliminary to coming over here, for it got the initial ‘lost’ feeling of coping with entirely new work over before joining the unit at work. At Cosham I shared a room with Isme Begbie, whom I liked very much indeed. Others there were Majors Campbell and Brownlee and Capt Hunt and Misses Gray, Tennon, Begbie and me.

Very soon after I arrived we were joined by about eight surgical teams from London – from Westminster, Barts, St Georges and LCC hospital staff. I worked in two wards (C and D upper).

One was most efficiently run and collected all the interesting cases; the other was a shambles from first to last, and was avoided by all the surgeons like the plague. I was happy there and busy by fits and starts – penicillin and Penicillin Pete were my evil stars, but they were not enough to spoil the fun. I shall remember Cosham perhaps chiefly for the rabbits, especially Fritz, a biggish black rabbit of doubtful sex brought back from Normandy by a major who was wounded. The rabbits were brought out into the garden in front of our quarters and we used to let some of them free to skip about on the grass. They kept getting out during the night, too, and chasing them filled up spare afternoons or mornings profitably.

I was the first of the army ones to be recalled from my unit and as my relief arrived before my units were needing me I skipped off early, thinking I could travel on to Llandeilo when the order came through. There came instead a series of frantic phone calls from Cosham, each contradicting the one before, and the last one saying I had to report Goodwood House, Chichester the next day!

So I gathered myself together in a rush and departed back that way I have come – even going through Portsmouth en route. On the journey home from Portsmouth I had lost my valise AND revolver, and had a distressing 24 hours of uncertainty waiting to see if I should escape a court martial for losing it. Luckily and to my enormous relief the railway people found it the day before I had to go to Goodwood and so I was able to sort things out (and jettison heaps of things from my luggage – which I immediately sent for again when I arrived there!)

We stayed at Goodwood until July 16th or so and the weather was glorious nearly the whole time – I shan’t forget the tremendous relief of meeting Peggy Ingham at last – I had missed seeing her at Llandeilo, but had heard about her while I was at Newport. I knew we should be sharing everything in the future and much of the enjoyment of future experiences would depend on how we got on together. From the moment I met her I knew all was well – we could be good friends, and ever since we have grown to like each other more and more.

At Goodwood we lazed about, usually going into Chichester to shop and have coffee in the mornings, and usually had beer-drinking parties at the local pub in the evenings. We had some glorious walks round there too, and visited the little shell-house on the estate – a unique little place and simply beautiful.

Illustration 1: Goodwood House, near Chichester

Illustration 2: The little Shell House in the grounds of Goodwood

House

4 Sigmoidoscopy: a procedure where a doctor or nurse looks into the rectum and sigmoid colon, using an instrument called a sigmoidoscope.

We had a dance while we were there and I joined in, in spite of misgivings, and enjoyed it very much. It was an odd time, those three weeks or so, there were so many strange faces to get to know all at once, and nobody was really at their ease – certainly I wasn’t.

At last came the fateful day we had been expecting and we were confined to the house ready to move off within a few hours. We packed our valises at half an hour’s notice and I stowed away most of the things I wanted later on the journey – e.g. pyjamas! The next day we were taken by lorry to the station and had a ten minute train journey to Havant and there Peggy and I left the men (much to our temporary annoyance) and joined the sisters in another lorry drive to the transit camp A2 a few miles north. There we stayed and were magnificently fed, housed in 160lb tents (we two shared with Matron and Miss Reynolds) and entertained by cinema shows, music by brass bands and drinks at the Blue Peter club.

Our lives were ruled by megaphone; every few hours announcements were given out – important, routine and frivolous by turns. We lived in the open for the first time, used our knives and forks etc. and did our own washing up afterwards. Luckily the weather was gloriously fine and we continued our sunbathing in an atmosphere of peace. We met Billinghurst, and Newhouse (from 29th G.H.) there and they left the day before we did. On the 19th July we left the camp and droveback once more to Portsmouth, nearly passing the Uncle’s house in Beach Road, and boarded our L.S.I.(s) 2 at the pier. We got on board about 2:00pm and cruised around the harbour for a bit and then moored up to a buoy to await the starting signal from Gosport.

There were 7 L.S.I.s altogether in our convoy and we were awfully lucky because we were on the leading one with Squadron Leader N and Captain MacGregor. They invited us into their wardroom and gave us a marvellous sherry (we hadn’t tasted sherry for several months and could think of nothing we should enjoy more.) We were all allowed up on the bridge and I spent most of the night and early morning there, wrapped up in an enormous grizzly bear camel hair coat and drinking a succession of colossal cups of tea and cocoa. We skinned our eyes searching for the buoy lights which marked our course, and outline the swept channel to France – I never saw one before the others, though I was determined to do it! They laughed at me when I said I could see through the big telescope, for even the Captain said he couldn’t see anything through it himself. And the laugh was on me at first because they had closed up the end with newspaper except for a tiny hole, so of course they thought I was pretending to be able to see when I couldn’t! But later I picked out the number of another craft through the telescope before they could read it by naked eye and then they had to believe me.

When I went up to the bridge in the early morning it was very misty indeed and we had lost two of the other L.S.I.s – the two Canadians. We thought at first that we should not be allowed to land, but we were allowed to go through into the harbour (Arromanches) and it was a wonderful sight – full of ships of all sizes and shapes and men staring at the ship-load of women in khaki and waving and grinning like mad.

Enough for one night. I’ll continue the sequel on French soil another night – cocoa calls at the moment. Goodnight!

References:

From the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/overlord_d_day_paris_01.shtml

About Arromanches harbour:

• The Landing: Located at the center of the Gold Beach sector, Arromanches was liberated on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
• Mulberry Harbour (Port Winston): Due to the lack of immediate, large-scale deep-water ports, the Allies brought prefabricated, portable concrete harbours across the English Channel. The Arromanches harbour (Mulberry B) was crucial after its counterpart at Omaha Beach was destroyed by a storm.
• Logistical Hub: The harbour enabled the rapid, high-volume offloading of equipment, ammunition, and fuel, bypassing the need to directly assault heavily fortified ports initially.

3rd September 1944 (Bayeux)

Back to the top…

If I don’t go on with the story soon I know I shall leave it for months, so I’ll continue tonight – the paraffin lamp is behaving beautifully and my ward is settled for the night (and I am not washing my hair although I ought to be!)

After we landed on the beach we joined the men again for a few minutes and then we were whisked away with the sisters again in a convoy of lorries, miles and miles through the villages and lanes which looked remarkably like the South coast countryside we had left a few days before. As we went by the Tommies waved and called to us and smiled broadly and we felt that we were welcome and incorporated into the B.L.A. already. After visiting 79th G.H. where there was no room for us, we set off again and arrived by many and devious routes at No. 121, where we were given the freedom of 4 or 5 big marquee wards. We dumped our belongings on the beds and went off to sleep immediately, some dressed and some undressed.

The men joined us the next day and told us tales of a night out in the open, sleeping under gas capes in the ditches of a so-called transit camp, which was no more in effect than half a dozen open fields. They had had a five or more mile walk with full kit to do before they got there and altogether felt very hard done by, but joked about it all nevertheless.

We stayed at 121 about a week, maybe more, I have forgotten. We often walked up to a nearby hill 15-20 minutes away, to see the equipment arriving and watch the beginnings of our house going up.

But for the most part we led a life of sheer laziness, and the weather after the first three days was wellnigh perfect. Goodness knows what we did during the days, but eat and sleep, but they sped by. Then we moved over here to our permanent site in the orchard where we are now. We had bell-tents instead of the promised 160lbers and we were very disappointed about it too. Now we have 160lbers and the difference in spaciousness and comfort is enormous.

For about two weeks we acted as a ‘hotel’ billetting the incoming hopital O.R. (ordinary ranks?) and sisters and officers until their sites were ready to receive them. We meanwhile continued on our sun-lit holiday, bathed in the river, set up tents, played tenniquoit, washed clothes and filled the time in unprofitably but without effort and were quite content. But after a week or two of this we began to fear that the war in France would be over before we got any cases or saw any wounded at all.

But, as the army always does,suddenly we were told that we must make ready to receive 500 odd cases by the next day and we spent a hectic afternoon and evening drawing ward equipment and getting the beds and bedding etc. put up and two wards ready for occupation. On August 8th we got our first convoy and they filled the wards in a few hours – mostly surgical cases and some of them bad ones. We acted as a C.C.S. for a week or so and then went onto full hospital documentation and slowed the pace down a little.Now we have been working for nearly a month and the pace has slackened off considerably. I have 75 beds at present – ward G of 59 beds and H of 25 beds and they are all given over to dysentery cases, of which there is a major epidemic.

The work is not hard, though the writing is tedious, and I am enjoying it tremendously. Luckily I have an excellent and friendly crowd of sisters and we work together harmoniously and things are done with reasonable efficiency and order. I am very glad that I am on the medical side, for there is less temperament amongst our members and the atmosphere is that of keen clinical interest and helpfulness, and enthusiasm is not regarded as mere childishness. I am slowly aquiring an idea of how to do a sigmoidoscopy4and what to look for and find it is much more difficult than one would imagine!

Drury’s chest cases are very interesting and I often visit his ward in the evening and help (?) with any aspirations and pick up any clinical tips which may be about. I have settled down happily to the daily round here and don’t feel awkward and out-of-place any more, and am beginning even to feel that I belong in the mechanism. But today especially, there is talk of changes in the not far distant future and that means that we shall soon be off to our winter quarters – whether East Indies, or Germany or even Burma. Goodness knows – it might be home, with the war over, but I think that is only wishful thinking at the moment!

Goodnight!

2nd December 1944 (Rouen)

Back to the top…

About 3 months since I wrote last – it hardly seems possible that we have been away from England so long – nearly 4 months altogether.

Pretty soon after the last entry – September 19th to be precise – we set off from our home fields in the early and chilly dawn, and travelled in a convoy of trucks all the way here. We arrived about 4 pm the same day, and were bitterly disappointed with our first sight of our new quarters, for we came into the old quad surrounded by the old buildings! But we soon came under the old arch and saw the new buildings in all its towering red, white and blue glory and from high up in the centre of the third storey a waving mess of arms belonging to Staff Porter Cpl. Spoer, Benny and Hunt welcomed me on behalf of the medical division.

The ride itself was fairly uneventful – we went through many badly bombed towns and villages, and in many of the towns the children clambered up on the running boards clammering for cigarettes and chocolate – they were terribly short of both these things amongst the civilians. I started off in the leading lorry, but it broke down about halfway here, after being “difficult” several times on starting. So I transferred to another lorry, and we bowled along gaily in that, finding our own way, for we had lost the convoy in the delay. But we arrived before the convoy in the end, and never discovered where or how we passed them.

I can well remember being indignant after tea, sitting with Peggy in a dirty little two-bedded room above the Sergeants’ Mess in the old building, and surrounded by our half-unpacked belongings, because the M.O.s who had arrived in the advance party were busy running around taking over the patients in the wards, and nobody had asked me to help or told me what they wanted me to do! But I did not get a chance to muse that grouse for long because at supper time Col. Jones asked me to visit the prisoner wards in the old block and find out if there were any medical cases needing attention that night.

I shan’t forget those prisoners’ wards – I worked over there for 3 weeks or so and can’t say I enjoyed it. Each ward contained about 100 beds or more, mostly high french beds; the rooms were long, dingy and dirty, the floor of rotten planks, the windows grimy, the men and beds untidy, and the language difficulty made friendly intercourse with the patients impossible – a rather dreary job.

That first night I communed, in a mixture of French and English, with the German doctor, and between us decided there was only one really ill medical case – a boy called Krause who had a chest wound and a pl??? full of fluid on the right side. Col. Jones looked at him and aspirated 10 oz of puss from his chest the next day. Then we settled down gradually to normal work, and after a few weeks I got Ward F in the new building, started specialising in throats and really began to enjoy myself. One of the sisters of No. 9 whom I saw before they departed was Sister Selmes, a tiny short burly woman whom I had met at Newport, and who was very amusing and always cheery. Sister Kaye was here too, but I missed her.

Now we are moving again and departing this evening on a train journey which promises to be long and dreary, to a destination unknown and probably unsavoury. Rumour has it that it will be a convent miles from any village and in the flat wastes of Belgium. But things often turn out to be better than they sound, and I still hope it may be so this time. We have been jolly comfortable here tonight – hot water and central heating have worked well during the past month or so, and the lighting, though more than a trifle temperamental at first, had become pretty reliable. During our stay here we made some good friends amongst the french civilians; the one who we know best perhaps is Yveline Pigashe, the pretty little golden-haired french student who came every day during the lunch hour to talk french with us. Then Madame and Monsieur Baillon and their sons and daughters have visited us many times to tea or dinner and were very kind indeed to us. Not numbered amongst our friends is Mdlle. Cauchois, a french woman doctor, who persisted in her friendly demonstrations in spite of our repeated and ????es. The afternoon when we went to tea at her large, dingy and eery homestead was a dark day for us, and we felt that we had escaped from prison when we managed to get away again!

There have been many changes in the M.O.s since we came here – Jock Ramsay and Cameron have been posted; Bacchus and Jolly have been loaned out but are rejoining us soon. Others have gone and others arrived, but the medical firm still contains Jordan, Drury, Godlove, Major Cameron and Capt. Sanderson as before. Patterson has gone to 108 – the move is the pity and we have a skin man Semple – and 2 V.D.ites, who we don’t feel really belong although technically I suppose they do.

At one time we heard that there was to be new woman M.O. – a major anaesthetist called Winter, who qualified at R.F.H. (Royal Free Hospital?). That gave us great cause for speculation for a week or so, but then she was posted elsewhere, and we settled down again in our coupled serenity. We manage to get along fairly easily in the mess and though we two are very different indeed in lots of ways, we have much that is fundamentally in common and no frictionsever have arisen between us, and I don’t think they will. I have tried to join in the endless parties and dances that go on in the unit, but I can’t manage to enjoy them, they just make me feel miserable and very “out of it”, so I am making up my mind to stay well away in future, and rather be labelled as “odd” for not belonging than “dumb” when I do! Thank goodness for Drury and Col. Jones – their values are the same as mine, and their moral support stands me in good stead when I feel isolated sometimes amongst the others.

To so many of the mess the “gay life” seems the only one and dancing and drinking the only sources of enjoyment, though I think a good many of them are serious enough about their work, and good at it too. Life in a mess is strange and often uncongenial; we live so much on top of each other, and yet there are few who are really good friends amongst us, or who would choose each other’s company if we were not thrown together by the war powers that be. It is probably an experience well worth surviving, and I have learnt a lot about human nature in the past few months, if nothing else.

And now for the next chapter of this strange human drama! Goodbye to France, probably for several years!

Back to the top…

• Monday, Feb. 7th 1938 – starting in casualty, sincerity
• Sunday, Feb. 27th 1938 – casualty not so bad, ambitions to write and travel
• Wednesday April 6^th 1938 – getting to end of casualty and will miss it
• Saturday June 25^th 1938 – pathology, looking foward to Children and Midwifery
• Wednesday, July 27th 1938 – on the Children’s wards
• Monday, August 1st 1938 [Bank Holiday] wondering what the future holds, different moulds, feeling homesick
• Friday, October 7th 1938 – district midwifery from a clinic which used to be a pub

back to the top…

Monday, February 7th, 1938

Now that I have re-read my last entry after the steadying interval of a couple of months, I would like to cross most of the end part of it out. It reads just as if it were high-sounding nonsense and got up for effect rather than to give vent to real feelings. And I rather think, now, that it was. When Jim and I wrote to each other some time ago, he was criticising my literary, or rather poetical, attempts and insisted that it was essential above all that they were completely sincere.

He was right of course, but not until you have attempted to produce something which you want to be good can you realise how very difficult it is to be quite sincere, or even to know whether you are being so or not. It is no good writing what you would like to think, as if you did think it spontaneously; you only give yourself away, and go hot or cold with shame when you meet the thing later! Also, sentimentality is a dangerous stumbling block. Nothing is so moving if it is rightly used; nothing so nauseating if improperly handled, or if it is merely put on. On the whole, I think, better avoided 

I’m on casualty now, and not certain whether I am enjoying it or not. The post is quite unlike any of the others, and you rely on yourself and are accountable for your actions very much more than on the ward posts. Students give gases, sew up wounds and do some of the minor ops e.g. circumcisions etc. The work is certainly hard while it lasts, but there are slack as well as busy days for everyone, and if you get overtired it is really your own fault, and means that you are not using your time off in giving yourself a well-earned rest.

The first few days on casualty or ‘gate’, are distinctly chaotic, and you spend a good deal of your time either doing what someone else is doing for you, or forgetting to do what the doctor has ordered. There are innumerable bylaws about procedure on different occasions and you learn them one by one – by the infallible method of breaking each in turn and being hauled over the coals for it. Still, the house staff, the nurses, and above all Sister are really most long-suffering, and we do not get really the amount of blowing up and acid comments to which we all lay ourselves open. Perhaps in a week or so, when they have exhausted all their indulgence for the ‘new’ post they will be less kind, but again by then we shall have got over the first petrifying panic of the new surroundings, and be able to hold our own in the face of criticism.

I suppose that it is because children are ruled by their parents so entirely when they are young that they care so intensely what their superiors think of them or say to them. A word of praise is a lasting joy, a reprimand or thoughtless roughness causes intense misery, possibly very deeply rooted and remembered long after the author of it has forgotten. But as the child grows older, fashioning his mind and character and getting slowly accustomed to making his own decisions and acting on them, then he begins to lose the exaggerated reverence for the opinions of others, and grows to rely on his own appreciation of what is to be praised or condemned in himself as well as others.

I seem to have entered a strange state of fatalism recently. Nothing upsets me for long, indeed even at the moment of happening I am oddly unaffected by it  – as if it were happening to someone else and I was merely a slightly interested onlooker. It is very comfortable to have a second self which will ungallantly deny any relationship with the offending member in that way!

I must stop now – no more nonsense!

Goodnight!

back to the top…

Sunday Feb. 27^th 1938

Nearly the beginning of another month – they seem to slip by so rapidly, and the three months posts slip by with them, the more is the pity. I have now almost completed a month of the casualty post – that most dreaded of all the posts, and it has turned out to be quite survivable after all. Indeed it gives opportunity more than the other posts for rehearsing the part of Doctor, and discovering the most readily-made mistakes. My dread of stitches and gases is subsiding rapidly and I find that it is true, as I have told myself so often recently, that what others have done must be doable and therefore not to be dreaded.

Last Saturday I sent a copy of a short article I had just written for the magazine, to Jim for his criticism. He hasn’t written yet, and I don’t expect his verdict will be favourable when he does. I have never sent him a prose attempt before, and am interested to hear what he thinks of it. I should very much like to write a book or short stories or articles of some sort when I am older, and settled down in a practice or hospital somewhere, and have got something worth writing about in my head.

Next to my longing – well on the way towards being gratified – to become a doctor, I want to write, and I want to travel. I feel  as if the writing can very well be delayed until I am older, or even till I am ‘getting on’ and need a hobby not as strenuous as a full-time doctor’s work, and that is pretty strenuous as I well know. The travelling I think must come sooner, while I am still young and strong and able to enjoy roughing things and bumping my body against nature’s hard corners. I really think I must be developing a wander-lust in my bones, for nowadays the thought, as now, of setting forth on travelling adventures makes my heart jump up and down with excitement, and my tummy go curiously light in anticipation.

An exquisite short story by Martin Armstrong was read on the wireless today –  it was called ‘Birds of Passage’. After hearing that and after reading Jane Eyre again, as I am doing, my ambitions about writing myself seem a little presumptuous, and at least doomed to failure. Maybe it would be wiser to fill my time with doctoring and if necessary keep a diary as this one, for my private enjoyment, thus giving myself opportunity for scribbling when the mood is present, and denying anyone else the privilege of throwing cold water and perhaps hard words at the resulting drivel.

Bedtime so Goodnight!

back to the top…

Wednesday April 6^th 1938

Two late nights running have dragged all excess energy out of me for the moment, and I am giving myself the easy task of writing here until it is a sufficiently sensible time to drop into bed.

Only one more week of Casualty after this one  – I am dreading the end of the post, and the return to the dull round of pathology and wards again. There is a true dramatic quality in Casualty, absent in the other posts. You get a chance of showing your mettle, and also of finding how you react to making mistakes in front of companions and superiors. We are extremely lucky in having had exceptionally nice C.O.s Blenkin and Payne. Blenkin left at the end of last month, and we gave a supper party for her in Evans’ flat. She, Mr Payne and Mr Taylor came, and it was a success – they stayed on till almost midnight. Evans arranged a German supper with all kinds of unusual and good things to eat. Also we imported beer cider-cup and coffee, though we forgot the coffee until we were nearly going home! Blenkin we jokingly have called ‘the Darling’ for that was what one of the patients was heard to say about her. But it suits her exactly, for she is a perfectly natural, unassuming and tireless striver after all things, however trivial, that will help the patients under her immediate care. She treats us students as friends and just hasn’t any superiority, though she has a dignity of her own, and a quickness of perception and understanding that worms pathetic stories by the dozen from willing or unwilling narrators. Her efficiency in all branches of casualty duty is undoubted, and she will tackle absolutely anything that needs doing.

Mr Payne is quiet and sensible, very decent to the patients, and pretty efficient, though not, I think, infallible. What makes me like him perhaps, more than for example Mr Taylor or Le Vay, is that his work does really thrill him; the romance of healing has gripped him, as it does all the really true doctors. I like him ever even more since the supper party, for there it was possible to get to know him a bit unwound from the strappings of authority, and he showed up pretty well, putting Mr Taylor with his affectations and explosive – sometimes beastly – language out of court. Time for bed, so –  Goodnight!

back to the top…

Saturday June 25^th 1938

I haven’t been keeping up this diary at all according to plan, and there are large chunks missing between the entries. But perhaps the chunks are better missing, as everyday events are a bit monotonous. Even now, after about two months, there seems little to say. In spite of bewailings the Casualty post ended, and in spite of forebodings the Pathology post hasn’t been unbearable. We have only another week to go now, and then it’s Children for Jones and me for two months followed by Midwifery in September, October and November. On Children’s post we get Dr Hobhouse’s beds as well as Mrs Chodak-Gregory’s, so there will be plenty of reading to be done. I have really been working fairly hard at Pathology, and have reached the stage of being sorry that I didn’t work harder at Junior Medicine or Surgery. The weather now is really blazingly hot, and that makes me fagged out and uneager to tackle work in the evenings.

Last Wednesday Mum and Dad paid a flying half-day visit to London and we met at Wimbledon for the tennis. It was marvellous seeing them again after being away so long – my last holiday was in January. They both looked very well – Mums seems to look prettier every time I see her, and nobody could be sweeter or more lovable. They are grand parents! It seems however pretty rotten that they should spend all their energy and money on educating and training their children, and yet see so little of them. Such is the lot of most unselfishness it seems – it is its own reward for no other reward appears.

Jones has been elected senior for the Children’s post, and for a little while I was verging on jealousy – it is beastly how competition brings out the worst in people. We have worked together most of the time at hospital, and I consider myself just as good a worker as she is, and I suppose that made me resent the fact that she was preferred to me as senior. I know really that the election makes no difference whatsoever, and that all I have to mind about is that I make myself as good a doctor as I possibly can, let alone what anyone else does, and whether my standard is theirs or not. It is a weakness to want recognition for one’s achievements and honour for one’s capabilities.

Another triumph for Jones is that Dr. Playfair, on behalf of Dr. Shaw who is now head of the V.D. department, has offered her the post of senior assistant there two years after she has qualified. The pay is £300 a year and the attendance only 18 hours a week. So Jones is simply overjoyed, and feels beautifully safe and free from worry about her future after qualifying. She is almost certain to get 3rd H.S. [House Surgeon?] job too if she wants it after qualifying, as she was the only student on Miss Dearnley’s post on Gynaecology and got to know her very well. All this made me, with my complete absence of plans and prospects, slightly green too, but that also is stupid really because I certainly don’t want to specialise in Gynaecology and V.Ds.

Hospital goes on unobtrusively changing round so that students go and residents change so quietly that you never notice the absence of one or the presence of the other. The new house list has just been published, and we shall get Crossley on Children – not too bad but might have been better! Mr Payne is now R.N.O. and Mr Taylor has gone into the blue. It really was time too that he went, for his good name was becoming slightly tarnished, and we were getting very tired of his bumptious presence – poor man, what horrid things to say! Mr Payne is apparently coping adequately with R.N.O. though he hasn’t the experience of Mr Taylor yet. Jones and I attend Minor Meds. with others from the Pathology post, and we get all the work of diagnosis etc. to do as the others haven’t done any clinical work yet.It is good fun. 

Must go to bed now, so Goodnight!

back to the top…

Wednesday, July 27th 1938

Nearly a month of the children’s post gone now, and a fortnight’s holiday only about three weeks away. I haven’t felt so much in readiness for a holiday for ages, for I’m really a bit overtired now and the work is fairly heavy. But this post is one of the most enjoyable that I have done so far – the children are most fascinating and both the authorities and nursing staff that we meet are very friendly and create a genial informal atmosphere. 

There are only five of us on the post this month – Jones, Burton-Brown, Nuvell and Koluyan and myself. Two others are joining us in August. Nuvell has been away on holiday recently and Koluyan is never on the premises when needed, so we three remaining have been running about and doing most of the work. We have Dr Chodak-Gregory’s, Dr Shelley’s and Dr Hobhouse’s patients, and I have had about 10 cases – new ones – since the beginning of the month, so I have gained quite a bit of experience. 

Dr Gregory becomes nicer and nicer as you get to know her, and we are all sorry that she is going to be away during the whole of August, so we shall see very little more of her after this week. Dr Shelley we have seen extremely little of so far, as she missed rounds and outpatients quite a bit at the beginning of the month, and is away on holiday now until the beginning of August. I hope she teaches a lot to make up for missing Mrs C-G’s rounds etc. when she returns.

Dawn-Pattison, Mrs C-G’s H.P., has been extremely decent to us – most approachable and willing to help and not a bit aloof as I expected! Her tutorials on Wednesdays before Dr Hobhouse’s rounds have been awfully funny. She has told us pretty exactly what Hobhouse will say about each case, and how we must reply. And her forecasting has been most useful and stood us in good stead in our many moments of need with him. Crossley is coming on in August instead of D-P, and I rather fear that the atmosphere may be rather different. Still I was wrong in imagining that D-P could not unbend, so maybe I will be wrong about Crossley too – I hope so. 

This evening I have been to a sherry-party at Mrs Williams’ house in Harley Street – for those of us who have done the test mealls and vitamin C tests for her. I had two glasses of sherry, one of tomato juice and a most variegated assortment of eatables. All this made it impossible for me to work tonight, and anyway I have been overworking just recently – so I’ll go to bed.

Goodnight!

back to the top…

Monday, August 1st 1938 [Bank Holiday]

They call them the “long, long thoughts of youth” and I think they are right. Our thoughts are long and rambling and a little restive. Living ‘up’ and rather isolated – partly isolated by choice of course, for there are people I could descend upon – gives me time during the weekends and holidays to take stock of things wider than the daily routine. I think about myself, my future activities, and get a creepy feeling wondering what the future holds in store. And I think of other people and of what and how they think.

Just recently I have acknowledged to myself what I have always up to now I thought nurture –  probably because it should theoretically be nurture. People are stamped definitely in different moulds, and though some characters of different moulds are alike, products of different moulds have nothing akin to bind them together. I mean really that there are some people that I find it absolutely impossible to like, even if I do not actively dislike them. Some people I can, and do of necessity, feel a sympathy with; others I can neither talk unrestrainedly to nor feel a single interest in common with them. It is a very curious fact that it should be so, and it would be very interesting to see if Mendel’s Law applied to such a moulding of mental make-up. Anyway it seems to be pretty true to say that like types appeal to each other, for the friends of those with whom I cannot feel at ease are, almost without exception, those whom I should choose last of all for my own friends. In a way this grouping is worth it, for any dexterity one can steer moderately clear of battles with ones antipathies, and the joy of finding a person in whom one senses true sympathies is doubled.

I’m feeling a bit miserable tonight. I think it is really a bout of homesickness, for Richardson has just departed homewards on holiday, and I’m feeling a bit marooned in consequence. There is nobody else in the house, I believe, except Mr and Mrs Sydney down in the depths. In many ways I like being by myself. I have a strong bump of reclusiveness, and will always rather retreat behind the doors of my room than sally out to make merry in company. I’m not sure that I don’t revel slightly in my independence and the fact that I am quite sufficient company for myself. Really we are most of us humbugs at heart! 

Goodnight !

back to the top…

Friday, October 7th 1938

Roberts, Nouvell, Kohiyar and I are all at 434 Essex Road* now, doing our first month of district midwifery. Last month we four, plus Jones, were at R.F.H. doing the midwifery wards. Last month I thought was foul, and I was rebelling against the rules and regulations nearly every moment – though usually it was only a mental rebellion!

* The Royal William was situated at 434 Essex Road. This pub has now been demolished and replaced by the office block in the photo.

https://www.closedpubs.co.uk/london/n1_islington_royalwilliam.html

Living together constantly, and living both a day and night life the whole time was altogether too much of a bad thing to those quite unused to it. I was longing so often to be able to have even a moment’s quiet to myself, and even five minutes with secure knowledge that I would not be rung up to “come immediately”. Bigby the third O.A. with whom we had most to do, did not get along well with us. Her over conscientious sense of duty, her overserious outlook on the most trivial things made even everyday things a duty and a burden. Her moments of lighthearted chatter and amazingly uncontrolled laughter made her even less understandable than if she had always been serious. Sykes and Stokes were very easy to get along with and Sykes especially gave us a good deal of necessary light relief on occasions. ‘Conny’ is an attractive person everyone likes and admires. Professor is our inimitable little Scotchwoman; Moore-White and efficient and entertaining little chatterbox; Shippam is ‘heavily’ nice and really unfathomable. 

In the first month we got 10 cases each, which was good going. So far here we have each had one case and Roberts and Kohiyor have had two. My case was an extremely lucky one. The lady was a Mrs Bastie and within five minutes of our arrival she started second staging and about 10 minutes later the baby was born – no complications. I was very afraid at one time at one time that she was going to have a bad P.P.H. for she started bleeding severely before the placenta was nearly ready to expel. But we held our thumbs for a few minutes and the uterus hardened up and the bleeding stopped, though the placenta did not come out for about 45 minutes. I should have hated having to Crede the thing out.

Essex Road clinic is a weird little place – originally a pub. There are two parts to it, separated by the kitchen. Downstairs is the clinic proper with consulting rooms, sterilising room etc. Sterilising all our own things was a tremendous business at first, but I quite enjoy it. Freath is charming and we get along well with her. She is very nice indeed about letting us do exactly what we want to our patients without interfering or advising.  Enough for the present.

Good morning!

back to the top…

• Tuesday Jan 19^th 1937– a bout of ‘flu, Alan’s 21st and engagement
• Saturday, May 1^st 1937 – on friendship, Jane Eyre, integrity
• Monday, August 16th 1937 – holidays, friendship and marriage, Junior Surgery
• Friday, October 22nd 1937 – hospital life, poem for Joll, mortality
• Saturday Oct 23rd 1937 – cancer, death, war, pacifism
• Saturday, Dec 11th 1937 – tired wonderings, Queen Victoria film, stresses of a young doctor

back to the top…

Tuesday, Jan 19^th, 1937

            A really wonderful opportunity to write here! I have got up this evening for the first time after ‘flu, and I have never known an evening be so long! I’m not supposed to read a great deal, and besides I am awfully tired of reading; I’ve thought of writing letters, but as I have already written home saying all the latest news, it would only be dull repeating if I did.

            ‘Flu was horrid, and the worst part of it was, and still is, the cascara! In a truly misguided moment, I allowed myself to be given three doses of the stuff as it seemed to be having no effect. The result was a series of violent colic attacks during the night, and they made me so miserable I felt I could have dissolved into a pool of tears with ease – and comfort! My tummy is still quite upset, and I have no appetite and feel sick at night time – memories I expect. But otherwise I am pretty well alright – the trouble at the moment is that the cold in the throat has travelled up Eustace a bit and blocked both my ears so that my head feels uncannily cotton-woolly, and I don’t hear properly – what I do hear I hear with my whole head, it seems, and it is very nerve-wracking when it goes on all day. My reward is coming however in the shape of a week’s holiday – doctor’s orders – at home. I am probably going on Friday and will come back for work at college again by the following Monday week. I suppose I will have to wander over to college and see Dr. Dickson and Prof. Cullis about missing this first fortnight of the Primary course. I don’t expect they will be overjoyed, but I don’t think they will try to make me stop – I should not feel much like working for a bit if I did stop, I know.

            It is dreadful how being absolutely lazy and resting in bed infects you with the germ of idleness, so that when you get up, behold you have no initiative or ‘go’ at all, but just sit still and wish there was something worth doing (conveniently skipping in your mind anything feasible which crops up).

            It is very odd, because I can’t hear my pen writing, although I know it is making the usual sort of noise alright. I can hear my watch ticking if I hold it right against my ear, but if it is more than an inch away, I can’t hear it at all. I have to listen to people, when they talk to me, very carefully or I don’t understand what they are saying. The sounds reverberate so that nothing is clear-cut but everything runs together in a buzz – not a 1d Buzz!

            Last Saturday week, Alan had his 21^st birthday party, and his and Peggy’s engagement was announced officially – by a gramophone record he made at Alexandria. Everything was a tremendous success that evening, and they played ping-pong in the dark with phosphorescent balls, and phosphorescent false noses – it seems to have gone awfully well.  Pat wrote me a long letter describing how she and Betty got up again, after having been put to bed, and prowled about the landing until the guests arrived for supper about 1 a.m.! They saw all the dresses etc. and listened to all the revelry until about 2 a.m. when they crawled back to bed – and fell asleep at once I’m sure! Pat will be simply overjoyed that at length she will be able to let people know about Peggy and Alan, and not have to put them off with tactful half-truths all the time – rather difficult for a youngster who is dying to let them all into the precious secret!

            I have spied a pack of cards, and if I can remember, or make up, any games of patience I think that is an excellent idea. Yes, no?

Good-night!

footnote: Cascara

Cascara sagrada is a herbal remedy that used to be a common ingredient in some over-the-counter (OTC) laxatives.

The bark comes from a tree called the California buckthorn. This tree grows on the West Coast of the United States and parts of South America. Historically, it was used by Native Americans to treat a host of issues, including:

• constipation
• digestive problems
• joint and muscle pain
• gonorrhoea
• gallstones
• dysentery

back to the top…

Saturday, April May 1^st 1937

            Writing May instead of April has given me rather a nasty moment. Primary starts on May 31^st, and to be actually in the fateful month is rather frightening when it comes upon you suddenly.

            I have nothing special today to commit to paper; the reason why I dug out this book was because my mind just refused to settle down to work for a bit, and I have made a sacred vow not to read non-work books from now on. My conscience should doubtless revolt against my writing here as much as reading novels, but at the moment I’m stifling it!

            Working for Primary has been much better fun than I thought at first it would be. Luckily, Jones and I get along together very well, and these three months have made us much greater friends, and we really know each other well now. We have a great deal in common in thoughts and ways of doing things. I like her very much, but she will never be the truly ‘friend that I know could exist for me’ – Whatley I think is about the nearest I know,  but then again I don’t see much of her now, and she has many other friends. It is funny how very few people you meet you can really want to get to know intimately. Generally, you can tell them almost at once though when you do meet them. Whatley is one I have felt that for, Ileene another and – less approachable – Professor Keene and Dicky. Another kindred spirit is Maud. By the way, those two words “kindred spirit” just about hint at what I meant, as Mr. Rochester says our minds are “something akin.”

From quoting Mr. Rochester, I can’t resist going on to my pet theme of Jane Eyre. No other book touches me as that one does, and only the others by the same author evoke even an echo of the response that Jane Eyre evokes. I know there is nothing original in praising this book – it is the pet of thousands of people. But that only means that others feel it as I do, and though perhaps that brings a tiny ray of grief that others have uncovered and gathered up the precious spirit that feels so personal a discovery, yet I know that really I am deeply glad that others do know and love her as I do.

 I doubt if men would respond to her mind as women would, but then I think rather the type of mind is called for rather than the sex. A person is living there in the leaves of that book, and to read the book with sympathy is, I think, to know Jane Eyre better than the majority of our friends. She has the sense of letting you into her heart, without having a special spring-clean and redecoration to make it unrecognisable for you when you enter. That is the secret of true living – to be founded upon a rock, true always to yourself and others in big and little things. That is what gives you the courage to face anyone or anything with a steady eye, and dispenses with all need of “pose” or affectation or concealment. It sounds easy, but if it were more people would succeed in achieving it.

I think perhaps Jane herself shows what it may cost you to keep the clear bubbles in the soul-springs. Her struggles to carry out what she knew her true nature demanded are described so perfectly that you struggle in sympathy as you read. It is so easy to slip over the slight dividing line, and just miss the harmony of a nature absolutely in tune in all its chords. Yet to possess such a nature, whatever it costs you to retain it, is to live as no others could and enjoy a sense of peace with life nothing else could give.

 Now having got so far, we come to a pitfall. Realising the truth of what we’ve said, do we pat ourselves quietly on the back and say, “And that is what we are like”?  It is very easily done, and I rather imagine I may have done it in the past. To understand and sympathise with that nature seems almost to confer the nature on oneself, but although of course it doesn’t, yet it helps in that direction I’m sure.

 I can’t go any further into the mists of reasoning; it is getting a little too thick, and with one last glance at the pitfall we will turn aside and sit till it clears a little.

And meanwhile I must go and do some shopping or the shops will all be shut!

Good night!

back to the top…

Thursday Jun 10th 1937

It seems incredible, but I have got three days in front of me before I return home, and no work at all to do all the time! The secret is that Primary has just been completed, and I am staying up till Monday to see the results – I wouldn’t believe anybody if they wrote to tell me, I must see it actually myself!

Roberts has been up here, sheltering from the thunderstorm which has been raging for the last hour or so. And now it is time for bed, so this must be postponed until tomorrow – and tomorrow we have ‘test meals(?)’ again, no peace at all these days!

Goodnight!

back to the top…

Monday, August 16th 1937

I can’t work tonight – too tired, so this seems just the thing to tide me over till a reasonable bed-time. It is no use trying to fill in all the gaps between my entries here, besides it would be dull reading I should think. But anyway, I will say that I failed Primary – not very badly, but then most of the failures were on the verge I imagine.

Since then I have had six weeks’ holiday. Of that I spent 16 days in the middle of Ireland with Ileene Allen at Hightown. That I had a marvellous time needs no saying, for I always enjoy every moment in her company. We may well call ourselves twins, for, though that is not true physically, mentally we have twin feelings, and we are always in good humour in each other’s company, and the more we see of each other the more we want to see. I don’t think I shall easily forget the night-time talks we had as we lay in bed, both in the same room in the little wooden bungalow. How ‘deep’ and muddled we got, and what solemn nonsense we pronounced! Ileene produced the winner of the series by keeping half awake at something to one o’clock proving that Newton’s laws of mechanics were false! She knows no mechanics, and I am supposed to, but she won easily, and we had a wonderful nonsensical time arguing it, and nearly going off to sleep in the middle of logical propoundings.

I wish I knew that I would find someone who ‘fitted’ me perfectly; to many it seems silly to worry about that – there is loads of time, and I am certainly not in a hurry. But I can realise now how inexpressibly happy a really harmonious married couple could be, if their minds held the sympathy which real friendship, such as mine with Ileene, has. And a home life of that kind too – I would love the assurance that it is coming, though there is no hurry about it. I wonder often – shall I marry or not, and I always hope I shall, for I know there are men whom I could love, as love should be between husband and wife; who would keep each other’s hearts young.

Never mind, I can’t write it. Still I wish it would happen, and that I could know now that it would. I feel that either I shall marry and it will be the truly right person, or I shall remain unmarried, and let work take up all my time. I certainly don’t feel that I shall have an unhappy marriage, or any terrible love tragedy – perhaps I’m not impulsive enough!

And I was supposed to be writing about my six weeks holiday! The time I spent at home was spent mainly in playing tennis. It is tantalising how each year I get a few weeks’ holiday, just enough to get into the hang of tennis, and then back to work and all out of practice until I get another few weeks later on! But it is harder on those who play with me than on me myself.

Now, rather sketchily, I think we are about up-to-date, and I can say gently that at the moment I am at hospital again, doing Junior Surgery under Mr Joll and Miss Beck. And that explains why I am too tired to work this evening, for Monday is Joll’s operating day, and we have had five good hours of it in the theatre, striving madly in the atmosphere of quite unsubdued thunder, conjured up by Joll and Beck, both of whom were in great form as far as fury goes. And it goes miles with both of them!

Nobody pretends that either of them is good tempered, but they say that it is worthwhile getting their harsh words if you get their technique at the same time.  Besides I lop-sidedly enjoy surviving some of Beck’s tantrums, and to think that her scathing remarks have no power to make you miserable takes all the sting, or most of it, out of her venom.

Her bark is many times worse than her bite, and as she bites us all almost indiscriminately we very soon forget about it. I have always had a terror of hard words, because I suppose I always reasoned that they were merited and therefore to be taken to heart. But now when half the time you are sworn at for someone else’s mistakes and the other half of the time for mistakes you did commit from sheer ignorance, then the torment ceases to overwhelm you, and you bob up again cheerfully instead of slowly rising from a whirlpool full of misery, only to be submerged again almost immediately. Besides, and more to the point, if Beck sees her blazing utterances don’t upset your equilibrium she doesn’t produce nearly so many, and you score both ways. Still, good old Beck, she is a marvel of efficiency, and what our famous – or infamous? – Mr Joll would do without her nobody knows!

That’s enough for tonight, we will continue, or rather reopen the ‘shop’ another time, there is heaps to say about Junior Surgery I assure you!

Goodnight!

back to the top…

Friday Oct 22nd 1937

When I last wrote it was near the beginning of the Joll Post. Now we have nearly reached the end and Gynaecology comes upon us in just over a week. These three months have passed very quickly indeed, and I am sorry to think that they are almost past, for I for one have thoroughly enjoyed their passage. It has been a very novel experience, and the thrill of surgery works its way into your bones amazingly quickly. I prefer surgery to medicine; it is much more straightforward, and the results are more spectacular, and so many lives are undeniably saved as they could not be by any other method. Whereas in medicine so much seems to be patching up things for a variable length of time, or waiting patiently for the disease to cure itself. I never thought that I should be enrolled in the band of those who ‘want to get on with it’, for I always used to be a marvel at letting things slide, and of putting off till the very last moment anything which I could persuade myself could be postponed.

I am very glad that on Gyneacology, we get a great deal of theatre work, for I should miss it dreadfully if I dropped it all together now.

The infamous Mr Joll has really turned out to be, at least superficially, quite a likeable man. He has, undoubtedly, a temper, but he very rarely exhibits it, and during his Friday rounds has time after time shown himself patient in the face of blank stupidity, and helpful to those trying vainly to produce a fairly intelligent answer. He is also undoubtedly an extremely clever and competent surgeon, and his knowledge outside the scope of surgery seems to be exceedingly extensive and accurate in detail. He teaches well too, for he has a very clear mind, and one that always founds even the most difficult problems on the simple fundamentals. Beck, too, though I wrote reams about her tantrums, can be, and has been, very kind and forbearing with us on many occasions. At the beginning of the post, I wrote about their faults; at the end I modify that by adding their good points, and that is how it should be, and helps to  prove the old moral, that there is some good in even the worst – how flattered they would be to read this! 

A poem for Joll

The other day Joll did his five-thousandth thyroid, and Sister A.2. wanted a poem to celebrate the occasion – apparently Sir James Berry had a poem when he had done only three thousand! Anyway, I was commissioned to produce a poem, and last night I tackled the rather delicate operation. I achieved a rather poor result, but it had to do, and we persuaded Registration to type it for us on R.F. headed paper. Sister A.2. has, it is rumoured, got a special cake for the occasion of his celebration, and both cake and poem are to be presented to him on Monday afternoon. I don’t know the details yet, but I hope that Mr Joll will have the grace to stop for tea, and not rush through the list, and finish gasping somewhere near suppertime. It would upset poor Sister dreadfully; she quite worships the man.

Hospital life is still a bit of a strain at times, and some aspects of it still upset me, though the kind of upset that used to worry me most – the horrid sight kind – have completely disappeared, and I am hardened into iron as far as pain for others is concerned – sounds callous I know, but it’s only self-protection, and has to be screwed on top, and I could unscrew it any time. But what does still ‘unrest’ me are the post-mortems on patients I knew when they were alive. It is just a little too far for me, even now, and it raises such great and deep wonderings, such as the separation of body and mind, or body and soul, and the query of life after death. It is only seen in the post-mortem room, how the belief in life after death could arise so spontaneously from the sight of a friend lying lifeless, yet so nearly as you knew them alive. It seems impossible that the personality that you knew, and had intercourse with, has just evaporated and become, in a few hours, non-existent. It seems an insult to human life that a human being, with its almost unlimited possibilities and ideas, should degenerate in so short a time into something that the pathologist’s knife divides into exhibits A to Z.

Something has so obviously left the body. Call it ‘life’ if you like, but it is not life in the meaning of simply the driving force that made the protoplasmic wheels go round. It is the personality of the person himself, the thing that made him the person he was, and which distinguished him from the millions of humans with similar organs and tissues. It seems natural to suppose that this ‘something’, the really essential being that we knew, has survived the running down of the organic frame containing it, and has flitted away into its own world of unfettered freedom.

Yet, a mind with no means of expressing itself, or giving vent to its faculties seems meaningless and unintelligible, and we return to our original state of profound query, which leaves us restless in mind, and still worried by the memories of the evacuated bodies of the post-mortem room.

Much too late for ghost stories, so Goodnight!

Footnote: Mr Joll

Cecil Joll worked at the Royal Free Hospital, in Pond Street, in Hampstead, performing thyroid surgery from 1911 until 1945, when he died at the age of 59.

The surgeon was known for performing up to 14 operations a day and taught hundreds of students and many surgeons to the highest standards.

He also established the hospital as London’s leading thyroid centre. Professor George Hamilton, professor of surgery at the Royal Free said: “Cecil is internationally known for his work in thyroid surgery.

“His name lives on with the instrument known as the ‘Joll extractor’ which is now universally used. The Royal Free is proud to display this in our surgical seminar room.”

Meg was commissioned to write a poem for the celebration when Mr. Joll achieved his 5,000th thyroid operation. See the poem here.

back to the top…

Saturday Oct 23rd 1937

After yesterday’s outburst perhaps I should lie low for a bit, but I’m not going to. Being on surgery brings up other big things besides the post mortem worries. The thing which haunts you is cancer, and the tragedy is not only that you meet it so often, but that in so many of the cases you see for the first time the growth has gone too far for hopeful operation, and the prognosis is in terms of a few years at most. If only, you sigh, they would come earlier, and give you, and themselves, a chance. But the reply is always the same – “It didn’t hurt me, Doctor, so I didn’t take any notice of it”.

Joll, talking of this said that every method had been tried to get lay people to co-operate with us in that way, but he said that nothing was any good, and nothing would persuade a patient to confront a doctor with a lump and no symptoms.

A carcinoma of the breast which came into A.2. only yesterday said that she really went to her doctor about her legs, and only happened to mention the drawback to old age being that you get lumps and bumps everywhere. On being asked more about the said lumps and bumps, she said she had one – nothing at all really – in her breast. The doctor made her show him the lump, and so she was packed off to us almost immediately. Perhaps the greatest tragedy though, is to watch their faces, dreading the first signs of their realising what is the matter, and wondering how they will take it. The scared, tearful ones are pathetic, but the dazed and attempting-to-be-brave ones are worse. There are always the arguments for and against knowing everything about your condition, and in these cases it is I think, almost worse for them not to know, for their terrors and imaginings I should think must be terrible, when they suspect cancer.

I remember so well that about a couple of years ago I was sure that I was not a bit afraid of dying, and I remember saying I would not mind dying at all, I think I even said that the death of very near relations and friends would not upset me, as I knew they would be happy and nothing terrible had happened or would happen to them. I remember Whatley saying that unless you actually had experienced such a death you could not realise what it was like, and that really it was for yourself, and for the gap they left that you were miserable. I know I felt pretty cheap preaching away, with no experience, on matters in which I had no knowledge, while remembering she had lost her father, of whom she was extremely fond, not long before. But I know I owned up to talking through my hat, and that remembrance soothes me a little now.

For myself I own I am now less eager to die than I was two years ago. In fact I should be very, very sad, and probably panicky about dying if I knew it was coming soon, and going to cut off all my beautiful castles in the air for my future. But still I don’t honestly think I am afraid, and my experience of death, which has been pretty thorough during the last year, has inclined rather to reassure than upset me. It isn’t such a dreadful thing, and is rather a leaning back and relaxation than the tearing, rending agony that lurid literature pretends. A violent death perhaps would be very painful, but it comes quickly and unexpectedly and is over fast. Indeed a merciful Povidence surely turns all our tragedies into mercies in disguise – certainly nothing is ever so bad as you fear, experience has taught me the profound truth of that, and the knowledge of that truth helps you to give up worrying or meeting troubles even quarter-way.

Talking of violent death I must record that during the last year or two I have blossomed into a thorough-going Pacifist. So far my knowledge of Pacifism has been negligible or non-existent, but my belief in it has rested simply upon the fact that nothing in the world, that I have yet met, would persuade me to kill any human being against whom I had no feelings of personal hatred. Thus I would not take part in a war, and I reject war as an indefensible piece of conduct, for nothing, to me, can justify such meaningless destruction of innocent human beings. This simple conception of war – i.e. just viewing your own part in it – is popularly disregarded, and men – and women – brag noisily of national policy, security and defending their country. Surely it is more reasonable to look first to the step in front, and not speculate vaguely about what happens at the top of the hill. It would not be permissible, would it, to walk on and trample down fellow men, because hey happened to be lying just where you wanted to pass to reach the view? You could prattle as much as you liked about how important it was to see the magnificent view, and the beauties of nature it would reveal, but I should still think you shouldn’t have trodden on anybody to get there.

What’s the good of metaphors anyway!!

Goodnight!

back to the top…

Saturday, Dec 11th 1937

 My mood is a curious one tonight. I am very very tired,  but restless as well and languid – in fact full of the vague wonderings that usually prompt me to unearth this tome and scribble in it. There is nothing special that causes this upheaval of mental waters now and again, but some days the people and things around me are lit up by a different light from that of everyday, and I have time to sit back, as tonight, and let my thoughts run away, this this mood is conjured up. If only I had something to say it would be better, but there is nothing tangible enough for a pen to write, though the desire to write something, or anything, is great.

My gynaecological work keeps me on the go day after day, starting directly after breakfast and sending me fagged out home to supper and a welcoming bed. Perhaps the dramas, hardly even fully registered, during the daily rounds, work up fermenting in my mind until they bubble over. Certainly one sees life, and all sides and sorts of human nature at a big hospital. And though I am now 23, that is not really a vast age for the easy receipt of other people’s troubles, anxieties and murky secrets, and for an effortless assumption of dignity and authority among numberless adults looking to you as ‘doctor’ to help them.

This afternoon I saw the film “Queen Victoria”. It was frightfully good – very like Lytton Strachey’s biography. History is very real in the films, and there, even more than when considered in the abstract, conjures up questions about life and death that are enough to send anyone’s thoughts woolgathering in the limitless space of the mind. Those people who are, or were, so real have gone, all of them, and nothing can stop time stealing us away one by one after our allotted time. First you must go to school, then you must leave it, however much you want to stay, then you must choose something to do for your lifetime, and lastly you must die, and the whole population of which you were a unit will change till the world will be full of other people with whom you share only the fundamental qualities of humanity.

The BBC Theatre Orchestra are broadcasting, and to my tired senses their music making is like a mother’s hand clasped by a fretful child – soothing and calm, beautiful and rather lumpy to the throat. I should delight to be able to play music well, is a way of compassion that cannot be excelled. I should delight too, to be able to appreciate it as musicians proper can.

Goodnight.

back to the top…