8) Dear Flower girl

At lunch-time, about twelve o’clock, some nurses went off to have their lunch. The others stayed on and helped to feed the patients and then they would go to lunch.

After lunch, it was visiting. We had to go around and make sure all the patient’s hair was combed and there wasn’t a spot of anything on the sheets; if there was, we had to change it — even in war time. The linen was dated and we had to put certain dated linen on the bottom - it was the bottom sheet because it was older, and the better, more recent sheet on the top. It was very nice linen actually. We weren’t allowed to leave any patient with a spot of anything. If you’d just done the bed and washed them and anything was spilled, you had to change it straight away. We weren’t allowed to leave anything looking messy. Anyway, we’d go around he patients, comb their hair, and sit them up then the visitors came in and we had all these flowers brought in and the Junior Nurse had to arrange the flowers.

As a Junior Nurse, I was on a women's surgical ward and I had this letter. It was from a naval officer from a corvette who was visiting his sister - “Dear Flower Lady, Dear Lady of the Flowers, I don’t really know your name but will you go out with me?” I went out with him once or twice.

After the visitors went it was bed-pans and washings because patients were in bed much longer in those days; they weren’t ambulant as they are now.

On the surgical wards, you had lots more bad chests because the anaesthetics were longer and different so of course the patients were quite ill with these chests. Working in a mining community, if you left your apron on the chair under your bedroom window it was all spattered with black soot!

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the BBC Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Patricia Davies and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See more of Pat's stories:

• 1) I suppose it was inevitable…
• 2) Getting used to being on the wards
• 3) The unchanging rota
• 4) Othopaedic Wards
• 5) The Miners
• 6) Keeping coffee warm in the sterilizer
• 7) Mouth gags and tongue clips
• 9) Theatres
• 10) The Nurse’s Home
• 11) The ‘Guinea Pig Club’
• 12) Mice in the washing and other tricks
• 13) Enamel washbowls on your heads
• 14) Extra Work
• 15) Shake and Shake…
• 16) Little Nurse
• 17) A lot of things were introduced during the War
• 18) Only two nights off
• 19) Making and Breaking
• 20) My little bucket and I
• My visit to post-War Germany

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