Joyce's War (10 page)

April 6th 1941

Germany declares war on Greece and Yugoslavia and hostilities begin. Addis Ababa entered by British troops.

April 8th 1941

Massawa
24
taken.

April 9th 1941

We have evacuated all Western Desert towns officially as far as Tobruk, but rumour has it as far as Mersa Matruh. This is a great shock to Mona and me and, having just had our supper of tomato sandwich and coffee, we are finding ourselves in a state of stupor at this last bad news. It all seems so incredible and swift. Well, the next move that we must consider is possible evacuation of the hospital. I hope this isn’t defeatist but it is quite on the cards. We can’t decide what to take and what to leave, but we have definitely agreed to leave our tricolenes and black stockings and to take my
Albatross Anthology
in case they don’t go in for poetry in German concentration camps!

The wireless news tonight reported that 2,000 of our men have been taken prisoner and three of our generals are missing, probably captured – Cannon, Gambier-Parry and Tree. I had a letter from Ted yesterday telling me that instead of being sent to Greece he is being sent to the OTC but I fancy his course will now be interrupted. Actually, although we are talking extravagantly and laughing and saying ‘
malesh
’
25
in the best Egyptian manner, we are very worried at this news. The Greeks are cut off in Salonika also.

April 10th 1941 Good Friday

Mona and I went to a non-conformist service in the hospital chapel. Two very nice young padres took the service but only about 12 of us there.

April 13th 1941 Easter Sunday

Mona, Bill and I go to church again.

April 14th 1941

The blow has fallen! I am being transferred to a hospital ship. I feel absolutely dead when I think of it and all that it entails. Seven months here in Alexandria with good friends everywhere and now to be thrust solitarily into the mess of a hospital ship – how I shall loathe it. If only Mona and I had been sent together, it could have been different, but now – well goodness knows – if ever during the war, we shall see each other again.
C’est la guerre
. I don’t know the name of the ship yet or where she goes and where from, but now I must get to work and pack and how!

April 16th 1941

I haven’t gone yet. Still hanging around in a state of chaos and confusion. This room is a depressing sight but I feel too weak to do anything about it until I hear more definitely what I am to be doing. I had a half-day off today and don’t need to go on until 1pm tomorrow. So time for a sleep in. I forgot to mention that the
Velta
was machine gunned off Tobruk and sunk. Blunden was on her, but everyone was saved and the staff are in our mess, having lost everything. A cheerful prospect for me.

April 30th 1941

And still here. Although Matron tells me that I am still on call, I doubt very much whether I shall be transferred to a hospital ship but I still live in and out of my trunk, which is somewhat trying.

We’ve been evacuating Greece for the past week and part of their army has capitulated. I suppose the poor things are weary after all the fighting in the past six months and one can’t presume to criticise them, although we are told that the 5th column is rife there, as it has been in all countries that have fallen to the Nazis and we have been betrayed over and over again. The Australian and New Zealand troops seem to have been pushed to the fore again, and as before, have given good account of themselves. It remains to be seen if they will all get out alive as the Germans have been in Athens for some days and I suppose will do their utmost to cut them off. One can’t help thinking of the troops all the time and of the families who are wondering where they are and what is happening to them.

We ourselves are more or less CB at present. Only a special military pass will get us into Alexandria and even then we have to be out of it by 7.00pm. No one knows quite why this is but there are rumours of riots and impending air raids and troop landings and enormous convoys preparing for Greece. The latter is the most likely, I imagine. Mr Churchill has spoken and even he doesn’t sound over-optimistic for the moment. I can’t help thinking we will be evacuating Egypt before too long. I hope I am wrong but I can’t see anything else for it. And then where? At the moment we are holding the Germans in the Western Desert, though they are beyond Sollum, a few miles inside the Egyptian border. The Tobruk siege is holding out, we are told, and Dessie has fallen to us which should free many of our troops there. John has been in hospital with phlebitis on his elbow but is now out again and presumably back with his regiment. Luckland, who was to have been married about a fortnight ago, has heard nothing from her fiancé until a few days ago. She was terribly worried as he is in Tobruk and can’t get away. I’ve had letters from Colonel Green and the padre, both it seems in the Western Desert. I don’t know whether Ted has rejoined his regiment or is still at the OTC, the latter I hope. Otherwise he will be caught up in Greece, as his regiment is there – the 21st.

General’s son Bill came up to see me yesterday and, although I had half a day and was in the flats, no one had enough sense to tell him so and I missed him. I fancy he was on his way back to Palestine, or else back to the desert. PO Strong is back from Tel Akabir and on a fortnight’s leave. He came up to the mess the night before last, somewhat inebriated, I am told, and demanded to see ‘old Parry’ and couldn’t be got out! I was in bed blissfully unaware of what was happening until Mona told me he was at the flat door. She advised me not to go down to him and lectured him for a good half hour. I promised to have dinner with him last night at the Beau Rivage if he hadn’t drunk anything all day. He didn’t, so we had dinner and I lectured him again for his own good. But I feel awfully sorry for these boys, particularly when they are on leave. There is nothing for them to do in this place but drink, if they don’t know anyone to talk to. It is all very sad but they look so pathetic and lonely and they are missing so much because of this war. Sometimes I think to myself I shan’t do anything about it, I simply won’t go out with them and then, I remember that tomorrow, next week maybe, they may be dead. And I change my mind. Mona thinks I am soft, but I’d have more to reproach myself with if I refuse them an hour or two occasionally. After all, we haven’t given up much in this war and it’s little enough to do for our fellow creatures. I know I am right in this, although it mightn’t always be wise. But, ‘It is not wisdom to be only wise and on the inward vision close the eyes. But it is wisdom to believe the heart’.
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May 1st 1941

One hundred and sixty sisters arrived at Fairhaven for lunch – back from Greece. Mostly they are from New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania but I am told there are none from Victoria. They escaped with a hand case and what they stood up in. They say they have been machine gunned and dive-bombed all the way and had to leave their stretcher cases behind, but the Greek doctors promised to look after them. An awful thing to have to do – I dread the thought of anything like that.

Last night Cecil Duncan (RAF Ismailia) came up and collected Mona and took her off to dinner and the cinema. He had another RAF lad with him and I was asked to go too but was, fortunately, on duty. I have promised to make up a foursome on Friday night – but I really don’t want to go – can’t be bothered being polite and sociable to stray pilots who come up for a few days. Still, ‘
malesh
’. Eric Darwoon has been very badly smashed up it seems and was on the DIL but is now getting better. I must write to him if I can find out what hospital he is in.

We have a Yugoslav general in Hut 10 W. He is Chief-in-Charge of the Air Force and has compound fractures of his tibia and fractures of both radiuses. Dozens of gilt-braided Ruritanian-looking gentlemen come to see him by day and by night. His aide de camp is in the same room and his doctor is always within call. It is all highly diverting and everyone is in a pronounced FLAP about it, or was: the colonel and DDMS and, of course, Matron. He badly wants to be fed by one of the sisters but the colonel has decided that one of the orderlies must feed the gentleman. He has already told me that I am like the Yugoslav women, who are very ‘beoooootiful’, and asked the doctor to tell me that if he were a captain or a younger man he would … The rest was somewhat obscure and certainly purposely mistranslated by the doctor. All very interesting if embarrassing. The aide de camp had pentothal this morning to have his shoulder pain reduced and, on coming round, suggested that I should sit on his bed and hold his hand and what he told the doctor to tell me still remains unknown – fortunately, I think. But that too was interesting, I feel. They don’t waste time on formalities, these Yugoslavian gentlemen.

We heard today that a destroyer with a complement of 1,000 crew and troops coming back from Greece was sunk and only four men were rescued. Seven ships with 1,000 troops on board at least, have also been sunk. But the papers report that we have only 3,000 casualties against 60,000 German ones so it could be worse, of course. There is a convoy of wounded coming in now. A lovely warm afternoon and everything looks entirely peaceful but one wonders for how long.

May 7th 1941

Night duty

This came as a complete shock, Matron sending us amok the previous evening. We knew it was coming soon, but I fondly imagined I would escape, as I am still supposed to be on call for my ship. Mona is in A Ground and I am in Hut 7 – Officers’ Medical. We are full and even had to open Hut 8 for two naval men off a convoy from Tobruk last night. I have an excellent orderly with me for a change, a Yorkshire boy, really reliable and sound, which is more than a comfort. I asked him his name the first night and he said Ealey. I thought it sounded a bit odd, but imagined that he ought to know and thereafter called him Ealey in good faith. I found later from someone else that his name is Healey, so now I pronounce the H, but still feel he likes the other way the best. Selk is night superintendent and who could be better? Bedwell is on and Mullins, a very amusing Yorkshire girl whom I like more and more, and Rippling, a recent naval acquisition. The rest are fairly colourless at the moment.

May 13th 1941

Night off

I am sitting at 7 o’clock of a cool and pleasant evening, on my balcony, with all night in bed before me, breakfast in bed in the morn, as I wish, and a new and just possibly a comfortable pair of shoes to put on when I go on duty again tomorrow night. What more can a girl want after all? I feel so much at peace with the entire world that I could almost write a sonnet. I would call it, let’s see …
On first sighting a pair of white, probably comfortable shoes
. It would be good if I had enough energy to woo the muse – alas, dead these many days. For if ever a poet felt strongly about her subject this one would be hers. It would come straight from the heart, and deftly handled, it would be enough to make even the strong weep …

The seas still roll in, waters from the entire world, in endless motion. Ships on the skyline, merchantmen and fishing boats with sails of pure poetry. Ali leans over the balcony near me and insists on gabbling to me in Arabic of which I understand three words, ‘
suchac
,
quais
,
mucquais
’, from which I gather – rather brilliantly, I modestly think, that the heat was bad but the heat is now ‘
mafish
’ and the night cool, which is good. Ali is right and Ali is a poet, a philosopher in his own land. The donkey carts go by, bells all a-jingle, the peasant vendor ambles serenely along, and the last rays of the sun catch the glass jar on his capable head. Now he is one with yesterday’s 7,000 years. There are some sailor boys in white shorts and jackets pedalling past on bicycles; now an air force AC with his Greek girl, now a Tommy with his girl. Now an ambulance, now a despatch rider in a hurry, now a taxi with a QA correctly attired in her
beautiful tricolene and with a suitable escort. Now three Egyptians, complete with tarbushes, in a sidecar and a family going home from the beach in an opulent limousine. Now some transport driven by b-topee’d Tommies
avec
tin hats. The door banging below is one of the safragi admitting one of the girls coming off duty … endless activity, and as varied and colourful as life itself.

I am enjoying my ward – I’m not busy at all, although there is always a mad scramble to get beds made o’morning. I have Hut 8 Isolation to supervise as well where there are only two, both convalescent, nice boys. One is writing a book and hopes to publish it in America – I hope he does. As one has chicken pox and the other scarlet fever, they can’t foregather so each sits on his little garden wall in the cool or heat of the evenings and converses with the other across the ten yards of sand. So, one feels, governments should sit, in the cool of the day unhurried and in philosophic mood, with ten yards of this good earth between them and a kindly word of ‘goodnight’ before turning in over their respective garden walls. But men are stupid in the mass – and never will learn. Individually, I love them all, at least at some times and in some moods.

The men in Hut 8 greet me affectionately I always feel, although I don’t see much of them. Curtis, RAMS, watches over or so I hope. Just now by night – Hut 7 is my spiritual home – the men are mostly navy these days as the RAF and army are evacuated very often to other parts, just as they are nicely settled in. They are mostly young or youngish and a nicer collection of men you couldn’t wish to have. I like the ward to myself at night and I feel they are all happy to be there, which is a good feeling. There are some things which are more satisfying to me than medals and good reports and being popular with Matron and having the equipment correct or having the ward perfect on the colonel’s round. Little things that I can’t write down here or tell anyone about, because they would seem unimportant and in a sense conceited – although of course that doesn’t come into it at all – things that the men say to me from time to time, when I do simple little things for them to make them comfortable, real gratitude often clumsily expressed – golden words that send me on winged feet on my way and give me satisfaction in this ghastly business. There was a Danish captain on the DIL – he was moved to the Anglo-Swiss because our place was too noisy in the daytime and there wasn’t a room to give him – who patted me on the hand before he went and said with a sweet sad smile, ‘Your name should be Miss Nightingale’. He’s probably dead now. And a midshipman who sent me a note on the back of a section of the daily orders early this morning – presumably because he didn’t like to tell me himself – ‘Sister, you were awfully sweet to me, early this morning. Thanks a lot.’ This because I merely went and stayed with him for a minute or two during the air raid. I know how they unnerve him; he was on the
Southampton
when she went down and then on the
Huntley
when she went down.