The Real Band of Brothers: First-hand accounts from the last British survivors of the Spanish Civil War. Max Arthur
And that was it. I went to Charing Cross for my training, which was a wonderful experience, and that was the beginning.
I was getting on well, but then I became very, very ill and my mother was called. I’d been to see a friend in Brentwood and was coming home late—you had to get in by twelve o’clock at the nurses’ home from your day off. I realised it was late and I was going to miss my bus to take me to Hackney, and I ran when I saw the bus coming. It slowed down and then went on again, and I ran after it, and, as I ran, I missed it and slipped. I had a big gash on my leg. Nobody had seen me fall, and I knew it was my own fault. Then a motorist came along and said he’d take me to the hospital, but I said ‘no’—with my nurse’s discipline, I was afraid not to get back in time—so he said he’d take me to the house where I could get something to clean my leg and put some iodine and a bandage on it. He took me as far as Hackney and I met one of my night nurses and I explained to her. She said, ‘Come on, Phelps,’—they always called you by your surname—‘that needs proper dressing and stitches.’ The night sister came along, bound my leg, ticked me off and put me in the sickbay.
I didn’t think much of the injury, but after a while my temperature went up, and I thought my neck and face felt queer. When the doctor came, I told him I felt a queer stiffness at the back of my neck. He asked me if I was sickening for mumps, but when I told him I’d had mumps he left it at that. But that night the stiff pain got worse—at times I felt as if the muscles of my face were being pulled out of their sockets—and I couldn’t breathe. Early in the morning I had some kind of convulsion. Another nurse who had served during the war was also in the sick ward. Immediately she saw my condition she ran to the telephone, calling the night nurse, ‘My God, the girl’s got tetanus! I saw it during the war and you can never forget it!’
The night nurse came just as I had a second convulsion. The doctor came rushing in and there was a lot of telephoning for serum. Suddenly they were charging around like mad, sending to the lab to get tetanus antitoxin. They even sent an ambulance to collect it. There was talk of desensitising me, and I was given chloroform and morphine to ease the convulsions, but all the time I was conscious and in worse pain than I had ever imagined possible. While I was given a spinal serum injection, I had such a convulsion that my hands and feet felt as if they were being torn off.
I suppose this should have been the end of me, because the survival rate for tetanus, if not treated in time, is pretty small. For a week I was critically ill, but I don’t remember much about it. My mother was called and the matron said, ‘You don’t know what tetanus is, do you? Well, it’s lockjaw’, and the next thing [my mother] knew she was being given some brandy. I was very ill, but they got to me in time. Tetanus was very rampant in those days.
I returned from convalescing and told the matron that hospital routine had become empty for me. She was sympathetic and suggested I take a whole year’s rest from nursing. She also knew of my home circumstances and that we had no money, and thought I shouldn’t return home but look for other work. I didn’t know how to set about it, but when staying with my elder sister Violet, long since married, I was lucky enough to meet Mr Turner again. He thought I should try to study and suggested I apply for a bursary at Hillcroft College for Women in Surbiton.
I found the principal there sympathetic and understanding and I told her how I felt something was lacking in my present life, and how I knew nothing about social conditions, and above all how I had great difficulties in expressing myself—which I wished to get over. She listened very patiently. I hadn’t much hope, but not long afterwards I had a letter saying that, while no regular bursary was available, an unforeseen vacancy meant they could offer me a place, and with a second bursary from the Middlesex County Council I would be provided for.
They were well equipped for adult education, university and degrees. One tutor was Miss Street—who was very strong—she’d put the fear of God into you if you so much as looked at her. Then there was Miss Ashby, the Principal of Hillcroft College, a loveable, kindly, intellectual person, very gentle. Then Elsie Smith, who was a philosopher. They also took an interest and encouraged me, and they helped and influenced me a lot.
Miss Ashby took a special interest in me. She always called me ‘Penelope’, which wasn’t my name—it was Ada Louise—but it stuck. Elsie Smith also took an interest in me. Hillcroft was a traumatic experience, a place apart where I never knew what was going on in the outside world. In a way I just didn’t know how I was going to adapt myself, but I became great pals with Miss Ashby and her brother, Sir Arthur Ashby. He used to supply me with reading matter that I would never have got elsewhere.
That was 1934. I studied at Hillcroft College for one year, taking courses in English, economics, psychology and history. It was hard work for me but, in between spells of feeling very disheartened, I learnt a lot. At last I was also growing up, shaking off my exaggerated religious views and realising how much I had missed. I made a lot of new friends there, and two of my best friends were Jewish girls. This was one of the things that opened my eyes. As kids in Tottenham we jeered and laughed at Jews, even though we hardly saw any. People were always grumbling about the Jews—they had all the money, they were awful people. I couldn’t imagine having a Jew as a friend. Now I saw how wicked these prejudices were. I was beginning to think for myself, and this made me unsure, because there was so much to know. So much wrong with the world and so much confusion—I didn’t know where to start. At holiday time, I never knew where to go—if I went home it was to a house full of boys so I wasn’t sure what to do at the end of term-time. Miss Ashby said, ‘I have a friend I was at university with—Heron. I’m very fond of her and her husband and children. You’d love it if you went and helped her a bit, because she’s rather overwhelmed in her work, as well as her housework.’ So I went and helped her with the children. I got very attached to Hannah, Patrick [the future painter Patrick Heron], and there was another one who was a Jesuit, very monastic. Then there was Giles, who ran a wonderful farm. I was accepted into the family and they had a great influence on me. Mr Heron had these beautiful shops in London—dressmaking shops—and the family and I became great friends. I even went to Italy with them many years later. They educated me, really. Patrick Heron—I knew all his paintings. Meeting them was a wonderful experience.
Late in 1936, after I left the Herons, I found temporary work in Hertfordshire as a nurse—but I had no security or commitment there. I was friendly with a night nurse and one evening she asked me, ‘Phelps, are you off duty tomorrow?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Would you like to come and help us with the hunger marchers?’
‘Who are the hunger marchers?’
‘Don’t you know? You’re a bit green, aren’t you? The hunger marchers from Wales.’ I think her father was a Labour MP or in politics anyway—and she was very ‘red’.
I asked her what she wanted me to do, and she said, ‘Just some of your skills looking after their feet, and helping to collect food to feed them because they’re walking all the way from Wales.’
I said, ‘OK, I’ll come when I get off duty tonight.’
So I started trying to beg, borrow or steal for the hunger marchers—and it worked very well. Three of us ran round this little town and we got the men a hall, and the local Co-op helped us, particularly with food—and so did a number of local shopkeepers. They were surprisingly sympathetic and generous. We obtained free medical supplies; the Women’s Guild, a local doctor and clergyman all agreed to help in any way they could.
The marchers, when they turned up, were the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire contingents—about two hundred strong. I never saw such feet in all my life. Shocking. One man’s feet were raw, so I took him through the back door to the most fashionable chiropodist in the town, who at once agreed to treat him for nothing. Another man—you just couldn’t imagine it, his feet were so bad. I knew it was a hospital job, so I rang our ambulance and got the man taken to the hospital. I got hauled over the coals! Who called the ambulance? The porters who drove the ambulance knew me. I had to tell them my name, for them to take this man to casualty, where he was admitted. The matron called me in the morning. She said, ‘Nurse Phelps, we don’t employ nurses who are “red”.’