"
Witness: Mrs. Marjorie Wild,
Devon resident nursing in Somerset
In 1943 my husband (who was in the army) and I (a wartime
nurse) managed a few days leave together and revisited a
favourite holiday venue, which was a farmhouse at Instow, North
Devon. We got about by bus and on foot and one hot day we were
on the cliffs somewhere near Hartland Point, when I spotted what
looked like the body of an airman on the beach below. Ted went
down for a closer look, and confirmed that it was an unfortunate
airman, whose body had been in the sea for a long time. I said
that we must prevent it from being lost again to the incoming
tide, feeling that whatever the man’s nationality, he was some
mother’s son, and she would want to know of his death. Ted
refused to let me help him try to move the body, so we set off
on the longish ascent, in great heat, back up the cliffs until
we came at last to a house with a phone from where we rang the
police, giving them the number of our farmhouse so that we could
know the outcome. Later that day a police officer rang to say
that they had been able to save the body, and that he was a
German. Enemy or not, I felt that we’d made the effort.
Having been called up at 19, I opted for nursing and began as
a student nurse at Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children at
Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, in 1942, a few months after my
marriage I was the only married nurse. After a year or so, in
the course of which we experienced a great deal of bombing, my
husband was transferred from the North country to help staff a
prisoner-of-war camp at Goathurst, near Bridgewater, Somerset,
and his mother and grandmother evacuated themselves from Croydon
and the ‘buzz-bombs�?to the village of Spaxton, renting rooms
from the resident farmer and family. So I obtained permission to
leave Queen Marys on condition that I continued nursing, and I
joined my in-laws at the farmhouse, and joined the staff at
Quantock sanatorium, a three mile bike ride away. (the matron at
the hospital in Bridgewater refused to employ me as she wouldn’t
take married nurses). My husband used to cycle from Goathurst
for days off duty with a precious ‘sleeping out�?pass.
I had very little spare time as we were on the wards for nine
hours a day. We had half a day off a week, and a half day off on
alternate Sundays, and once in seven weeks we had two days off,
a blissful time when I didn’t have to get up at 5.45AM.
The rural cycle rides were unpleasant in times of bad
weather, but a joy in spring and summer, when I would hear 3 or
4 nightingales. The sanatorium in the Quantock Hills was a
beautiful building, formerly the stately home of the Stanley
family. I was told that the last son gambled away his
inheritance and the County Council brought the place. Most of
the male patients were ex-service men, whose service conditions
had brought on TB, and one had been a miner in the Mendips. I
was the only non-resident nurse and the only one who hadn’t had
TB, so I was encouraged to drink lots of milk and eat lots of
milk puddings, to the detriment of my figure! The nearest
villages were Over Stowey and Nether Stowey, where the poet
Coleridge lived at one time.
When, mercifully, the war ended, my mother-in-law returned to
Croydon (granny had died). I was physically unable to cope with
the long hours, the journeys and keeping house as well, so I
asked to be part time, but this wasn’t allowed, so I had to
leave, and until Ted was demobbed, and we also returned to the
Croydon area.
I enjoyed the village life. I used to sing at concerts,
possessing a good soprano voice (modelled on Deanna Durbin!),
and I accepted an invitation to sing one Sunday at the village
chapel, to the horror of my landlady ‘You, a church girl, going
to chapel!�?Life at the farmhouse was pretty primitive, oil
lamps, candles, no main drainage, and the water had to be
pumped, so in many ways it was good to leave the West Country
and get back to electricity and all mod. cons."
http://www.devon.gov.uk/localstudies/100331/1.html
Cheers
Laurie
Free Forum Hosting
Important Announcement
Prev Message
