Allies and Germans Together as Patients

Heroes Remember

Allies and Germans Together as Patients

Transcript

And we had an old Belgium man, an elderly man, and he went around with a broom and we swept them all [uniforms] out the door, and we, I just went around with the doctor and be priority one, priority two, priority three, I met them at the door, and then he would go to the OR, and I would keep feeding them to him, as one would come back, we'd feed him another. And we'd work, we had to go back to the hotel every night, the lorries were outside, seven o'clock, and you'd go back to the hotel and have your dinner then, then the next morning you would have your breakfast at six, get down to work. The MO would meet you there in your ward and you'd make, would make rounds of everything that was there, in the meantime there'd be another load in at night, you see, probably, and the poor night nurse, there was one night nurse on, we had good orderlies, really good orderlies, and the battle in the middle of the ward, these fellows started coming to, they all had shots of morphine and stuff to settle them down, that's all you could do right away, and you know they'd wake up and look in the next bed and it was a German. We put just put them all in the beds you see, nobody was sorted out. So then we had to open a great big POW ward, so that was upstairs then they was a fellow with a Sten gun, a Sten gun at each door, and they had taken over a German hospital and so they had a German doctor there and German orderlies to look after them, but there would be a Nursing Sister, Canadian, or Allied Nursing Sister in charge.

Description

Mrs. Page talks about having a combination of Allied and German patients, and having to remove all their armaments strapped to their uniforms.

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:: 02:15
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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Allies and Germans Together as Patients

Heroes Remember