She said, ‘You can’t do that here—not in this hospital. There are people here, nurses, whose parents wouldn’t approve of what you were doing—because I assume you are very communistic.’
I said, ‘Not at all, I don’t belong to any communist party. But if that’s the way you feel, Matron, if you think I’m going to infiltrate the nurses, I’ve got no contract with you, so I’ll go. Thank you, Matron.’ And I walked out.
I think she was a bit flabbergasted. I told one of the girls about it and she said, ‘Good. If you leave, would you volunteer for Spain?’
I said I knew nothing about Spain—I didn’t know anything.
She said I wanted educating, so she told me all about Spain—how the nuns were taking Franco’s side, and, of course, it grabbed my heart—I was young and very emotional. She told me, ‘You go to London, go to Tottenham Court Road, and you’ll see the people—the Spanish Medical Aid. Talk to them.’
So that was that, and that was when I first met my boss, I always remember him—Goryan. I think he must have been Yugoslav or similar—I never knew, but you never worried what nationality or political party people belonged to. Goryan was very good. He asked me all about my nursing—did I know anything about theatre work? We used to get amputations in ‘surgical’ from accidents, being in central London—so we had lots of accidents. I’d had wonderful theatre experience at Charing Cross, so I said, ‘Yes, I know a lot about theatre work, I worked at…’ But that was enough.
‘Well, you’re going somewhere where you’ll be very, very busy.’
Despite my theatre experience, the Spanish Medical Aid people still wanted me to do a radiology training course. ‘No, surgery is my calling, that’s what I’m good at because I worked in theatre.’ That seemed to suit them, so they handed me my ticket, and I was off.
On 6 January 1937 I left England as one of a party of four English nurses to report for duty with the Spanish Medical Aid Committee in Barcelona. Setting out was exciting enough for me because I had never been abroad before—not even set foot on board ship.
We went to France, were put up overnight and mooched around the next day—we wasted practically two days in France—but we had to get paperwork filled in. Then we boarded a train for Spain. It was a terrible, terrible journey into Spain to Port-Bou—which was a horrible place.
We arrived at the frontier at one o’clock, and we had our first experience of the war. The carriage next to ours in the train that was to take us to Barcelona was badly smashed and battered, and, while we waited, we saw our first aerial bombardment. It was far out to sea—the ships and planes were almost out of sight, the sound of the guns was faint—but the Spaniards were very excited, running about and pointing, with shouts of ‘Aviones! Aviones!’—all for very little, it seemed to me. While waiting, we sat in the sun outside a little open-air restaurant, where we had a meal of meat, rice, olives, fruit and coffee.
When the train at last arrived it had funny open carriages with wooden benches, and we didn’t have much room for ourselves and our luggage. It was mostly full of soldiers, and at each station on the line the train stopped and more Spanish soldiers got in, with much shouting and waving of handkerchiefs, while peasants and girls along the platform handed out armfuls of oranges to anyone who wanted them.
We were altogether three days in Barcelona. In the shops, food didn’t seem very plentiful, but I thought clothes were cheap, and our taxi was certainly the cheapest we had ever been in. There were hardly any signs of war, but still, as compared to other towns I had known, there was an air of tension about.
We made our way to the station with all our luggage—probably no one had ever gone to Spain as well equipped as we were. We had sleeping bags, leather leggings, boiler suits, blankets, nurses’ overalls, gas masks and various utensils. But, oh dear, when we got to the station! Inexperienced as we were, we didn’t yet know that this was wartime, and that people might already have been waiting the whole day to make sure of getting a place. The train was crammed full, with soldiers occupying every inch of the corridors, and one glance showed there wasn’t an earthly hope of getting all our luggage in. Our temporary organiser, who didn’t strike me as likely to organise anything, was in despair. He said it would be absurd to think we needed so much luggage, and he made us leave behind—of all things—our leggings, boiler suits, sleeping bags and blankets…in fact all the things we would later miss bitterly. He promised to send them after us, but of course we never saw any of it again.
In Valencia we had to change trains, and the train to Albacete was even fuller than the coastal train. As we drew away from the coast, it got colder. We stopped at all kinds of little stations, where crowds of villagers brought offerings of fruit for the soldiers—mostly oranges. I’ve never seen so much fruit in my life.
We pushed on to Albacete, where, after a long, cold wait, a guard came and took us halfway across the town to a place where an official in a badly lit office said a few words in English to us. From there we were taken to a hospital and put into an empty and freezing-cold ward, where we tried to wrap ourselves into blankets and get a little sleep. The smell of the latrines was terrific, everything was filthy and dirty and we were next door to the lavatories. I never slept that night. There was not just one in a bed—there were two or three—and sometimes you found yourself moving around; well, it was so full of people, and you’d say ‘move over—make room, I’m tired’, and you’d find yourself sleeping among a whole load of men. It was amazing to me. Gosh, what a terrible place that was! I think everyone knew Albacete. Shocking. We seemed to be stuck there—we couldn’t move until our papers arrived and it wasn’t just a couple of hours; you could hang around for days. You used to get vouchers for this and vouchers for that.
Albacete was the base of the International Brigades and was a bewildering military camp. We went from one supposed authority in charge to another. No one seemed to know anything about us—where we were supposed to go or stay. The main language in the International Brigades at this time was German, and then French. Scarcely anyone spoke a word of English, and I could sense at once that the English were not particularly liked.
At last an American doctor telephoned and found a room for us in the Hotel Nacional—a small hotel in a back street—and the front streets weren’t up to much. Our room was small, dark and filthy, with three narrow beds, placed right next to the lavatory, which had ceased to work, and the smell from which was overpowering. We tried to get away from this smell as much as we could, but smells of one kind or another could not be avoided in overcrowded Albacete.
On the third day, at last, we saw two Austrians who were in charge—Dr Neumann and Dr Talger—who spoke fair English. Here we were told we would be separated. Mrs Murphy would go to the Madrid Front and the other girl and I were told to report for duty at the international base hospital just started in Murcia. We were told that some wounded men would be evacuated to Murcia in the afternoon train, and we would be in charge of their evacuation.
When we got to the station we had a shock. Instead of the few wounded I had imagined, there were well over a hundred men: a few quite badly wounded, and some lighter cases—arms, legs and flesh wounds.
It was a terrible journey. It got dark and cold, and the train was so slow I sometimes wanted to get out and push. I tried to give attention to those who needed it, but most of the men were drinking wine and singing, and thought an enfermera [a nurse]—especially an English enfermera—a great joke.
At Murcia I was put in charge of my own general ward, but instead of an ordinary ward I found myself in a huge lecture hall, with endless rows of tightly placed beds. There must have been a good two hundred beds, all occupied and mostly by French patients. Some were badly wounded; others had little the matter with them except mysterious aches and pains. A few of them, I think, were just swinging the lead.
For the first two days, and practically all night, I was on the run, frantically trying to establish order, taking temperatures, bringing water and changing bandages. Those who could walk used to disappear and come back after a while with bottles of wine, and begin