Some memories never soften with time—they stay sharp, like the snap of cold morning air in the field hospitals.
I was only nineteen when I signed up. Not out of bravery, not really. It just felt like the right thing to do. The boys were going, and the nurses were needed. My mother cried the day I left, but she stitched my name into the collar of every uniform and packed my bag with lavender sachets.
We trained quickly—there wasn’t time to dawdle. Before long, I was posted to a casualty clearing station near Tobruk. Dust, heat, and the endless whir of stretchers. We worked in shifts that blurred into each other—triaging wounds, cleaning burns, writing letters for men who couldn’t hold a pen. I can still smell the antiseptic and hear the groans that filled those canvas walls at night.
But there was laughter, too. Real, belly-deep laughter. We made tea over camp stoves, sang songs off-key, and danced in the aisles of the supply tent when no one was watching. There was a kind of camaraderie in it all—a bond forged not just by duty, but by shared resilience.
The worst was the waiting. After a raid, before the stretchers came in—that stillness was the heaviest of all. But we got through it. Bandage by bandage, breath by breath.
When people call me a hero, I shake my head. I was a nurse. I held hands, gave morphine, whispered comforts, and sometimes—when there was nothing else—I just sat with them.
And when I think of those years now, I don’t dwell on the pain. I remember the courage. The friendships. The quiet strength of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
