Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950S

nurse. She found out where the girl’s sister worked, and applied to the Matron. She was only sixteen, but was accepted as a VAD, which really meant, for a girl of her class, a skivvy in the hospital wards. She didn’t mind. It was the sort of menial work she had been doing all her life, with no promise of anything else. But this time the horizons were broader and clearer. She watched the trained nurses with admiration, and decided that, however long it took, she would be one of them.
     
    Sister Evangelina and her ageing Poplar patients spoke frequently about the First World War, and shared memories and experiences. It was from these conversations overheard during a bed bath or a surgical dressing that I was able to piece together her history. Occasionally she would speak to me directly, or answer a question, but not very often. She never unbuttoned with me much.
     
    She spoke only once about her soldier patients. She said, “They were so young, so very young. A whole generation of young men died, leaving a whole generation of young women to weep.” I looked across the bed at her - she did not know I was looking - and saw tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. She sniffed loudly, and stamped her foot, then continued bandaging up the dressing somewhat roughly, with: “There you are, Dad, that’s that. We’ll see you in three days. Keep ’em open,” and stomped off.
     
    She was twenty when she volunteered to go behind enemy lines. She and a patient were talking about the air force of those days, the tiny bi-planes, only invented about twenty years previously. She said, “It was after the German spring offensive in 1918. Our men were wounded, stranded behind the line with no medical help. None could be sent to them by road, so an airlift was arranged. I parachuted down.”
     
    The patient said, “You’ve got guts, Sister. Didn’t you know that 50 per cent of all those early parachutes never opened at all?”
     
    “Of course I knew,” she said, bluntly. “It was all explained to us. No one was pressed. I volunteered.”
     
    I looked at her with new eyes. To volunteer to jump from an aeroplane, knowing full well that there was a 50 per cent chance of it being your last step, would take more than guts. It would take an inner heroism of a rare quality.
     
    One day we were returning from the Isle of Dogs to Poplar. West Ferry Road, Manchester Road, and Preston Road were, as they are today, a continuous thoroughfare following the course of the Thames. In those days, however, the road was cut by bridges in several places. This allowed the cargo boats to enter the docks, which were a mass of canals and berths and basins and jetties. Just as we approached the Preston Road Bridge, the traffic lights turned red, the gates closed, and the swing bridge rotated. This could mean as much as half an hour’s closure of the road. Sister Evangelina cursed and fumed under her breath. (That was another thing, incidentally, that the Poplar people liked about her; she was not too holy to swear quietly to herself!) An alternative was open to us: we could retrace our steps, and cycle all the way round the Isle of Dogs to rejoin the West India Dock Road in the Limehouse area, a distance of about seven miles. Sister Evangelina would have none of that. Pushing her bike, she strode purposefully through the NO ENTRY, KEEP OUT gate, past DANGER signs, over the cobbles to the water’s edge. Fascinated, I followed; what on earth was she up to? She stomped over towards the massed barges, calling to any dockers in sight to come and help us. Several came forward, grinning and pulling off their caps. One of them was known to her.
     
    “Morning, Harry. How’s your mother? I hope her chilblains have cleared up now the weather’s better. Give her my regards. Take this bike, will you, there’s a good lad, and lend us a hand.”
     
    Pulling her long skirts up and tucking them into her belt, she strode towards the nearest barge. “Give me your arm, lad,” she said to a huge man of about forty. Grabbing him, she cocked up a leg, giving us a glimpse of thick black stockings and long bloomers elasticated just above the knees, and stepped on to the nearest barge. I realised what she was going to do: she was planning to cross the water as the dockers did, by jumping from barge to barge until she reached the other side.
     
    There were eight or nine moored barges to be traversed in that way. The men, bless them, gathered round.