Getting the Hospital Set Up

Heroes Remember

Getting the Hospital Set Up

Transcript

But while we were in Brussels, this is really funny, our poor matron, she got, heard through the, here were all these girls in uniform, and they were for the comfort of the troops, her darling Nursing Sisters, well that nearly killed her, that nearly killed her. Here we're travelling separate routes. Anyway, we went down to open this hospital, big, big place, with a great big wall all around it, and the Germans had just left, and legally you're suppose to have a week for a 1200 bed hospital to set up. It's a lot of work to set up a hospital. But before the, I was in charge of a hundred, was a hundred bed ward and then I had a side ward, I guess another 50, and I mean, I had all the beds lined up, I thought about 100 beds and the Colonel came around, "Oh that's not enough beds, you have to get them closer together and get more in here," so I had about 150 it seemed, but anyway, you do what you're told, And then I was on my way down to the dispenser, dispensary, to see what they had in, what we could order, and but, all the casualties started coming in before we were quite set up, stretcher after stretcher, and these Germans they all had cans of fat on them, now that's a bit, and grenades, all loaded with grenades. Well, so anyway, I was in charge of this ward so I said, "Well, we have to get all the grenades off of these fellows." And I said to the orderly, "Put them in my office and we will lock the door in the office," nobody can go in there. And I mean, we have Germans, and everything, Canadians everything, all thrown in the beds, we got them into bed and we just went around and cut all the uniforms off and threw them on the floor.

Description

Mrs. Page talks about an erroneous rumour that went around, in effect saying that the soldiers thought the new arrivals had been sent 'for the comfort of the troops.' Then the casualties started pouring in, Allied and German.

Nancy de Boise Page

Mrs. Page was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. Her father was a doctor and her mother a nurse. Mrs. Page recalls going to the hospital with her father when she was young and knowing early on that nursing was her calling. She trained at the Royal Victoria in Montreal and in 1942 joined the army as a Nursing Sister. She served overseas in England, France and Belgium loving every moment she was able to help the soldiers. Following the war Mrs. Page returned to Queen Mary's Veterans Hospital in Montreal to continue nursing Canadian Veterans.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 02:26
Person Interviewed:: Nancy de Boise Page
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Location/Theatre:: Northwest Europe
Branch:: Army
Occupation:: Nursing Sister

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Getting the Hospital Set Up

Heroes Remember