Proper War Stories - By Bob Price

Seated with a pint, down at the legion, amidst army veterans of several eras and regiments, you might feel just a tad under gunned when, inevitably, the war stories get rolled out again. Look, if you were armed with a syringe, there are going to be limits on the war stories front aren’t there? You might even feel a different sort of veteran altogether, having been part of the ‘little army’, rather than the ‘big army’, the teeth arms (no, not the dental corp). But in support of you all, keeping the side up I want to assure you that I did once try. Down at the legion I trotted out some of my war stories, about the tour I completed in west Belfast with the Scots Guards. That should impress I thought, you know, the Guards division. 

It started very well. The medical team consisting of a very experienced Colour Sergeant who had been with them since they tackled mammoths, a lugubrious Corporal Gibson (Gibbo) and an eager guardsman who had trained up in first aid were in place already. I commanded one Saracen armoured ambulance and the Colour Sergeant the other. Within days I had my first proper casualty. In the ambulance we monitored both the civilian ambulance network and our battalion one. I think we muddled to two up. So, when I heard that there was a major casualty in the White Rock community centre Gibbo and I were straight there. The guy had been knee capped, and I got a tourniquet on the leg where he was bleeding from an artery. Off to the Royal Victoria Hospital we went, quick step, to the applause of onlookers who were astonished to see the army picking up a civilian. Afterwards, I got roasted by the CO. I hadn’t waited to get a platoon in place, to cover our evacuation. He reminded me that (logically) it could have been a trap. But there was a certain kudos afterwards. It was said on the street, that the new battalion couldn’t be such a bad lot, if we showed that amount of compassion for a local. Our guys reckoned in retrospect it was a useful (if ill planned) move. We finished the tour without one soldier being shot in West Belfast. 

Saracen Armoured Ambulance
Curtesy Army Medical Services Museum

Conflict can be dull they say, most of the time, and so it was for us. I completed public health inspections of the various camp canteens and shops and a daily sick parade. Then though (the legion men waited with bated breath) I collected a guardsmen from the basement of a block of flats who had broken his ankle, searching for stashed arms. We reversed the Saracen in, almost beneath the overhang, to limit the risk of being shot at. The casualty retrieved; we were about to move off to the military wing Musgrave Park Hospital when there was an almighty bang! I thought the opposition had shot a shoulder launch missile at us. Travelling at pace down the Falls Road the radio came up, ‘Hello 83 (our call sign) this is 0 ( battalion ops), do you realise that you have a calor gas cooker on your roof?’ They’d dropped it from the top of the flats and the door had caught on the Saracen railings. Now it flapped like a dog’s lop ear as we retreated to hospital. How astonishing were the traffic cameras, that they could tell it was a calor gas model. Must have been the trailing piping. 

Complete blank expressions. I hadn’t moved the veterans a jot! For pete’s sake, what did it take? I’d been under fire, hadn’t I? ‘Cooking on gas?’ one of them asked cynically. Right, I thought, share the camaraderie humour memoire, that will please. It was customs in the guards division for the men (out of direct earshot) to refer to their commanding officer affectionately by his rank and first name. So, our CO was Colonel Johnny. I struggled with it at first, having spent some time working in a venereal disease clinic you see. Anyway, the Colonel was hugely popular, greatly respected, and I thought, goodness, wouldn’t it be good for me to have a nickname used amongst the men? But it wasn’t going to be won checking sweat rashes, was it? Nor would I win it for completing a pre and post interview medical check when the authorities’ interviewed suspects, some of them subsequently very famous. 

Then it happened. By chance I overheard one of the platoon commanders assure his men that ‘Doctor Bob’ and his ambulance would be in close attendance when they went to check out a disused factory building. Doctor Bob….I’d arrived! The men loved me! Gibbo smiled. Yes, he assured me I was popular with the troops. I taught in a ‘weird way’ and I was diligent responding to concerns. I glowed for the rest of the day. That night Gibbo put me straight. ‘You do know sir, where Doctor Bob comes from don’t you?’ I shook my head. ‘He was a mad surgeon in the Muppets and Miss Piggy was the theatre sister.’ 

You’d better get the next round in mate,’ said one of the proper veterans at last. Look, I tried, I really did. 

Bob Price did one RMO(A) tour in Northern Ireland, some of you did many more. Yet he ventures that such tours made a real difference, to health, morale, as well as humour.

POSTINGS (tongue in cheek) by Bob Price

There came a moment the other day, over the marmalade and toast don’t you know, when I pondered postings. You might naturally recommend that I get out more, but bear with me. Stop to recollect this process, that which shaped many of our memories of service. Postings are sometimes how we catalogue the remembered career. We had good postings and bad postings. There were better places to be posted and terrible places to be sent. Taken quite literally it can make you feel as if you’re something passed inelegantly through the Royal Mail entrails. It started with the posting order, probably handed over to you with a smile or a look of grim determination. I remember after qualifying as a nurse (yes, a product of our own system) in 1975, I was sent off to the Military Wing Musgrave Park Hospital, Belfast and for two years. Initially, that seemed like an invite to the trenches. I arrived there as a wet behind the ears staff nurse cynically received by an established team who weren’t sure that they needed me thank you very much. I wonder if you ever harboured the thought that postings were sometimes handed over with a sense of glee?

Your next memory might relate to the MFO box. Nearly everything you owned went into that. It sounds like a joke about remembered poverty, doesn’t it? ‘When I was young, I lived in a two up two down hovel’. ‘Oh, that’s nothing, I lived in a bed sit’. Trump it all with the MFO box. I (or at least all my worldly possessions) existed in an MFO box. There came the day in BMH Rinteln where colleagues had to pack their MFO boxes to go off to the war in Iraq. As you weren’t allowed to include opened bottles of alcohol within the box, we had a goodbye drinks party. There was this bottle of Tequila (truly vile stuff), ‘fat wallet’ the civilian hospital accounts manager, my future wife and I who made the final of the slamming competition. The next morning it felt as though my head had Moved Forward Overseas.

I suspect something happens when you live and work within a system where you can be readily posted. There is a perverse mix of eager anticipation and horror as you anticipate imminent change. Here’s how I think it works. On the upside you think of the new posting in terms of locale. Clearly, Hong Kong (back then), Cyprus and exotica places like Brunei had much to commend them. You flick through the holiday brochures that link to the favoured new locale. But then, inevitably, you realise that postings were never just about locations, they were about people. Someone in MOD was playing a crazy game of reassemble the village community. It was as if you were injected into a long running series of the Archers, and whether you liked it or not you would live with Peggy, Jazzer, Dan and the rest. For goodness sake, when I was posted to one of our hospitals, no one advertised it as a Pyjama Dash exercises resort, that designed to counter the IRA, everyone drawn up on the car park at midnight, in your pyjamas, with your teddy bear in hand. Postings were about people, and you landed amongst the joys, suspicions and tensions that existed there. Was there really a witch in the attic, and if so, did you really wish to be posted there?

This is the point, isn’t it? Really, we were all victims, subjects in a social mix experiment. You were probably a victim weren’t you- just think about it. How many others, in different walks of life, get ‘posted’. In sharp contrasts to battalions (who were sometimes posted together, with the familiar comrades, as a family) we were posted individually. You might as well have been issued with a gas mask, a label describing your name rank and number, a consoling bar of chocolate and sent off to the countryside whilst the war carried on. No one explained the slightly bizarre family that you were about to be inserted into, the one that had a dozen grates to clean.

If you were lucky though, if you were very fortunate, you landed in a wonderful place and amidst some astonishing people. One such was the Army Medical Services School of Nursing. Oddly, it wasn’t one location (though the brochures about Woolwich on Thames were entirely beguiling). 

The school comprised a group of people, with significant talent and a clear commitment to training some of the very best nurses, those who went on to forge considerable careers in the Corps, and civilian life. People who worked here offered the most astonishing humour (‘Price, there is only one problem you face, you suffer from delusions of adequacy’).  

Gestetner machine for producing
 copies of handouts

They helped the neophyte teacher to plan education that was not only professionally sound and workable, but which seemed enjoyable to learn as well. For goodness sake, they taught me how to work the gestetner handout machine and the overhead projector. I won’t name names, you know who you are, and many others knew who you were. Of all the mats that a package could land upon, after traversing the system, this was surely a great one.

Bob Price served in the AMS between 1972 and 1990. He taught nurses in the Cambridge Military Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital and in BAOR. The habit persisted afterwards, at the Royal Marsden Hospital, the RCN and the Open University. He is now making more toast, the last went cold.

Thoughts and feelings on becoming a QA! by Rod Eldridge

 

I joined the RAMC as qualified mental health nurse (RMN) in 1986 and always aspired to become a general nurse or as some might say a proper nurse! My elder brother Malcolm was a serving general nurse (SRN) in the RAMC, and he was enjoying a varied and successful career, he was very much a role model to me in the early days of my army career.

In 1989 following a 2yr tour of Northern Ireland as a Cpl, I was successful in securing a place for my general nurse training being seconded to a civilian hospital namely St Peters Chertsey. I qualified in 1991 and went to work at QEMH on various wards and depts, I also did short stint in Belize C.A. with the FST. Later that year having been recommended I applied for my commission, it was at this time, the talk on the corridors of the QEMH about the changes to the nursing Cadre was rife with the notion that all nurses irrespective of gender were having to transfer to or join, the QARANC. This was mentioned many times in the interviews and panels during my commissioning process.

My answer was partly playing the game as it would be foolish to go against the decision which on the face of made entire sense as it was logical to put all nurses in one Corps, especially if I wanted to gain my commission. There was a bit of me which was sad to say goodbye to the RAMC, but we all serve side by side in the AMS and as nurses irrespective of our individual Corps histories, badges, and accoutrements, we still do the same job, a nurse is a nurse! I was asked how we should deal with the diehards, and I said, those currently opposed to the transfer should be listened to, acknowledging their concerns, recognising that it is difficult to adapt to change and correct any misunderstandings and reinforce the positives in terms of career progression etc.

Jokes about the QARANC nurses were abundant and strong and at times angry opinions were voiced from some loyal and long serving RAMC male nurses. I’m sure this significant change happened on 1st April 1992 which either was to reflect the new tax year or April Fool’s Day!

I heard stories of RAMC nurses handing in their old cap badges to the hospital CO and collecting a QARANC cap badge from the Matron, I think this was at CMH. I guess if true this a way of was marking the occasion.

I was successful in gaining my commission and the rest is history as they, I believe I personally benefitted from this change, as I had full and rewarding career. That said I did have a little bottom lip quiver when I was handed my AMS full rugby colours and it came with QARANC blazer badge (see pic)!

Lt Col (Rtd)  Rodney Eldridge 

BANGLADESH - A REFLECTION by Marjorie Bandy

I first went to Bangladesh by default. Our TA unit had been asked by the Bangladesh Armed Forces Medical Services [AFMS] to provide a team of nursing officers to teach and improve standards within areas of high dependency care for the Military. At that time our unit was commanded by a consultant anaesthetist of some renown, who spent a fair proportion of his time lecturing world-wide. He considered that based on his own experiences in the third world it would be necessary for the team to take with them an administrator to ensure that the team could spend its limited time in the country actually teaching.

It was decided that the unit admin officer should take up this task. Unfortunately, the planned time frame for this exciting venture had to be changed and the admin officer was then not available. Based on my previous experience I was asked to take his place. So it was that I became “the fat controller!” The first team deployed to Bangladesh in 1993 to work in a very administratively efficient AFMS and my skills as a nurse together were far more necessary than my skills as an administrator. To be fair it subsequently proved our CO right that it was essential that a fairly senior officer was needed to head the team to ensure the programme running “nearly” to plan, but able to manage unexpected and sometimes unusual changes.

To be able to appreciate the difficulties of working in Bangladesh at that time it is necessary to have some understanding of the country’s history. Bangladesh was originally part of the Bengal area of India but unlike much of the Indian continent the predominant religion was Muslim. Following independence for India there was conflict between Muslim and Hindu areas resulting in 1947 with an independent Muslim Pakistan of which Bangladesh was part. This was not a happy marriage and following a very bloody war and the loss of 3 million soldiers and civilians, Bangladesh became an independent country in 1973. The country is overpopulated and very poor, despite 3 rice crops a year unable to feed itself without importing food. The discovery of natural gas in the Bay of Bengal has helped to reduce poverty to some extent.

Each year the team was asked to provide a programme to teach three groups of 10 nursing officers,  ICU technicians and medical assistants. The first year was the most traumatic as the team had no idea what to expect. The culture shock and different way of working were much more difficult that we had imagined despite having done our best to be prepared. Added to this many of the hospital staff were not enthusiastic at our arrival, perhaps thinking that we would attempt to change things completely with no account being taken for their customs, culture and religion.

Within their system staff only look after patients of the same sex and indeed female patients and children are treated in a separate building with the exception of theatres, ICU and CCU. Medical officers who had an opportunity to undergo higher professional training in a western hospital were anxious to improve standards and to introduce a more hands-on care approach for nurses. Picture the scene where wards of 50+ beds had only one trained nurse on duty 0800 – 1400 six days a week and then on call for the rest of the time because there is no trained nurse relief. The task of trying to promote change without causing offence was initially daunting.

On the first visit little was available in the way of visual training aids. The maxim being if you need it take it with you. All of this does not take into account the enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge of our students. On the first visit, aids such as Resus Annie were so old they were almost unusable, as was the overhead projector. On future visits equipment was gradually replaced and upgraded.

The initial plan was to run courses for the full duration of the visit, running separate and joint lectures. Lectures had to take into account the necessity for translation and explanation as we were teaching a group who overall, only spoke Bangladeshi. Once we arrived in theatre, we discovered that the students would be expected to sit a final examination in English. This meant some re-arrangement of our initial programme, that continued on for all successive visits, sometimes because of requests of change by our hosts or illness in a member of the team.

One of the most difficult areas was always practical teaching and hands-on practise by the students. Traditionally nursing officers led the wards in a mostly managerial capacity with nursing aids and relatives carrying out basic nursing care. We soon realised the nurses had little strength for such things as lifting. In addition, the Muslim culture doesn’t allow for physical contact with male patients or indeed work as a pair with a male colleague. Once these boundaries had been realised and our teaching plans adjusted it became easier to plan and implement teaching programmes.

Over a period of time changes and improvements took place. This was noticeable in ICU where patients were provided with nursing care such as washing and passive physio for the unconscious patient. Humidifiers were no longer being left with the same water in between patients, increased response times to dealing with emergencies achieved and protocols gradually being written and implemented are examples of improvements. All of this might seem very little for the cost of sending 6 people annually to Bangladesh, but when one considers the cost of extra days spent in hospital because of pressure sores and the lack of infection control measures, it is a cost saving expense. With the numbers passing through the one military hospital in Dakar alone the potential saving is enormous. 

For me personally the greatest satisfaction came in 1997 when I was given a copy of the Defence Advisor’s report to the Foreign Secretary which suggested that our team was one of the most cost -effective sent to aid this Commonwealth Country [military] during that year.

For everyone who took part in this venture it was a challenge and educationally stimulating, requiring a great deal of preparation to ensure the highest standards of teaching despite the limitations. Everyone learnt to be adaptable to meet with the unexpected. Without doubt everyone who took part gained from experiencing the difficulties of the Third world and to appreciate our NHS. Lastly it would not have been such a success without the work and enthusiasm of all the people who accompanied me.



Marjorie Bandy

Chair Jurassic Coast Branch

Happy April Fool’s Day - You’re Now a QA! By Chris Buswell

I began my time in the QAs with a sense of disbelief and wryness. I was in Belize and the CO had told us we three male nurses were to transfer to the QARANC. Up to then I’d been happy in the RAMC for five years, first as a Combat Medical Technician, then starting RGN training (one of my tutors was Wendy who helps run this blog) and then working on a variety of wards and departments post registration. The date of transfer in 1992 was on the 1st of April and a sense that this was an April Fool’s prank was heightened when we received a photocopy of the QARANC cap badge during a parade. I continued my posting, marvelling at the beauty of the country and wildlife. I was awed in their caves at the spectacle of roosting bats and in Airport Camp I enjoyed seeing the iguanas that lounged around the hospital grass. The first sight of a vulture eating a carcass on a roadside during a return from working in the Field Surgical Team was spectacular, its wingspan seemed huge. During my gawping, the anaesthetist tied my boots to the back of the Land Rover. After that I didn’t take them off during the hour drive back to camp

Upon my return to the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot I was soon to discover from my wife, also a QA, that indeed I was now in the sisterhood of the Grey Mafia! I slunk to the Quartermaster and handed in my black beret for a grey one, with a shiny Cross with an A in the centre. So began a continuing interest in the history of the Corps and military hospitals. I worked in ITU, Paediatrics and the medical wards where I learnt about a certain Grey Lady, usually on night shift, when tales were spun and attempts to spook each other were performed. The day shifts ward sister’s cape and tippet placed on a drip stand and pulled along by string to the adjoining ward is legendary. I shall not reveal who did this in case Matron is reading! Little did I know that two decades later I would write a novel about this ghost and run the @QARANCHistory social media pages and the QARANC.co.uk website.

My student nurse training was at the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital, with stints at the CMH for midwifery and paediatric training.

I loved the camaraderie at both hospitals and met my wife, Karla (nee Partridge) at the QEMH. We later had a great three years at the Tri-Service The Princess Mary’s Hospital at Akrotiri in Cyprus. A highlight was a bed-push race in the airbase pushing a Thunderbird themed bed (we lost!). Our married quarter had a large garden where I kept an aviary filled with budgies. I swapped the resultant babies at a nearby pet shop in Limassol for an aquarium and soon the Children’s ward was filled with fish and enough food to last years.

In the army base at nearby Episkopi there was a British Army Rehoming Centre, and we adopted a handsome pointer dog called Bouncer from BARC. We all explored the gorgeous coastline in the base and around this stunning island and enjoyed swimming in the clear blue sea.

Both our children were born at the TPMH, delivered by QA midwives. Their care was first-rate - I never felt a thing!

My last year was served at the Navy hospital in Haslar, in a medical ward, which was hard, but, like all my service, immensely satisfying work.

I now live in a small fishing village in Scotland with my wife, where I write novels. I keep white doves now and have a Bravehound PTSD dog Lynne. An incident in Cyprus gives me recurring nightmares and she wakes me up by washing my face or poking her tongue in my mouth! We then have a cosy cuddle whilst Karla rolls her eyes, sighs, and goes back to sleep.

Sadly, I don’t have any photos of my time in the QAs as this was in era when there were no digital cameras nor mobile phones. I’ve plenty off-duty though and I enjoy looking at them and reminiscing. If anyone remembers me and has any, I’d love to see them. You can find me @CGBUSWELL on social media.

Chris Buswell - L/Cpl served from 1987 to 1997