Killickdown
Bushey Heath
Herts

February 1st, 1944

Dear Miss Murray

     When I came to see you the other day you asked me to write about some of our experiences in Malta during the period of heavy air attacks.

     Looking back on it now, it is extraordinary how the troubles fade from one’s memory, for on the whole we carried on with the day’s work and the ordinary routine of hospital life and did not think we were doing anything special at all. I worked in the Operating Theatre in the main hospital for seventeen months. My colleague was a Regular Sister – Miss M. P. A. Albrecht, and we had four orderlies. The “blitz” started in earnest a week before Christmas in December, 1941, and from then until October, 1942, we were very busy, except for a short lull at mid-summer

     Our theatre was on the second floor (the top) of the main building, which as you know, is a permanent military hospital in peace-time. We had one large operating theatre with a good shadowless lamp, a modern table, glass shelves and a composite stone floor which had been badly cracked in an earthquake several years ago. There was also a smaller theatre, which we used for septic cases and plasters. Both theatres had very large plate-glass windows, and for weeks we used to feel cross-eyed trying to peer through the criss-cross paper work with which they were decorated. The marvel was that although nearly every other pane of glass in the place was broken by blast, those two large windows never even cracked. We used to stand and watch the glass bend, but it never broke. After a blitz we used to go round begging for the larger fragments of glass to use as covers for the scissor and needle trays.

     The really hard time was when fuel became very short, we only had steam for the auto-clave twice a week to do all the sterilising for the entire hospital. Primus stoves were old to begin with, we could get no new ones or spare parts, and were reduced to manufacturing primus “prickers” from broken fly-swats. One of our orderlies was invaluable at making and making-do. He could coax anything to work, and he could improvise a drum, make a paper-rack or mend an umbrella with equal efficiency. After the worst night-session possible, when we were all tired out and there was a mountain of clearing up to be done, and the surgeons were cross and weary, Private Gurnelt [or Curnelt] always cracked a joke in his dry way, and raised a laugh.

     When we could no longer have hot radiators because of the lack of coal, we used to try to take the chill off the big theatre with five oil stoves. I have seen Miss Albrecht black to the elbows after wrestling with one of them, wicks were not obtainable so we made them out of old blanket, and of course the fuel was adulterated, and would not burn. As soon as the operation was about to begin we had to carry the stoves out and keep the patient as warm as possible with hot bottles. This of course was all in the winter-time, and it can be bitterly cold in Malta especially at night and when the “gregale” blows from the North. In the summer-time our chief worry was to murder the flies; some of the windows were fly-proofed, but not all, and for a long time no wire-gauze could be spared to fit the remaining windows. But it has been done now.

     Supplies of almost everything needed in a busy theatre were woefully short. We were rationed to 1 pint of spirit per week and 1 gallon of dettol per month. Teat-tubes, rubber gloves, catgut, some drugs, quick-drying plaster bandages and x-ray films were all rationed monthly. We used to do minor operations without wearing gloves, in an effort to conserve our dwindling stocks. We were never short of gauze (and I made thousands of swabs in my time), but we had to be careful of wool, and elastoplast was only produced when the Colonel asked for it! As well as this theatre Miss Albrecht and I were responsible for the small one which was hewn out of the rock when the hospital shelter was made. It was very small, and we had one cold-water tap in it, but we had a complete set of equipment and biscuit tins packed with extra stock, stored down there in case of emergencies. We used it once as an experiment, but luckily never had to work down there for any length of time. Whenever there was a night raid the lights were sure to fail, and when the emergency supply failed too, we carried on with the hurricane lamps and torches.

     I think many people who come to Malta now do not realise that we at the hospital, and in the theatre, often did all the immediate first-aid work as well as the larger operations. I remember one occasion when a South African pilot was brought straight from the ambulance to the theatre; the stretcher was put on the floor at my feet, and I had to get busy at once. The airfield was being bombed when he crash-landed and he was brought straight to us.  Another time a gun position just below our officers’ mess received a direct hit and the terribly wounded survivors were put straight into an open lorry and driven straight to us. The hospital is on top of a bare and rocky plateau over-looking one of the aerodromes. In such a small island it was impossible to have all the hospitals out of range of military targets, and we suffered in consequence. The aerodrome was bombed heavily and regularly, day and night, in an effort to put it out of action completely. The Army went to the help of the Air Force and infantry regiments filled in the craters on the runways almost as soon as they appeared. These men were without shelter of any kind and suffered many wounded.

     At one time the raids occurred with clockwork regularity. The enemy appeared at 7 a.m., mid-day and 6 p.m. We used to watch the first as we were scrambling to get dressed for breakfast; you spent the second raid in the theatre or Mess according to whether you went to first or second lunch; and if there were several casualties to do during the afternoon, you planned whether you would be finished before “the six o’clock raid”, we usually made that raid an interlude for tea.

     For some time an Italian formation came over with unfailing regularity at tea-time. We called them “The Frightful Five” because always that number of bombers came flying in close and unshaken formation despite the ‘flak’, and they invariably took the same route to the same objective, and did some spectacular high-level bombing. When the “Spitfires” came it was a different tale; I shall never forget how the patients and wives and children crowded to the low wall at the edge of the plateau and cheered and yelled as those planes came in to land. The first time they went into action was rather more exciting as usual for the hospital because the fighters went in to attack the JU formations over the island and, instead of turning over the hospital for their dive on to the aerodrome, they came straight on and a 1000lb bomb came down with a terrific swish, bounced once and came to rest leaning up against the mortuary wall! An Officer-patient, who had already been decorated for a similar feat went along from his ward and removed the fuse from the big bomb, and our medical officers dug the other two out of the ground and they were all carted away.

     Before the Spitfires came the Messerschmit fighters used to play hide and seek up and down the blocks of the Barrack hospital and machine-gun bullets used to fly. I remember the Sister-in-Charge of the Barrack Hospital Theatre coming in to lunch having had quite an adventurous journey across to the Mess. That Sister was Miss Marchant; she made a wonderful theatre out of a disused basement cellar. She cleaned out the dirt and cobwebs, helped to whitewash the walls and scrub the floors and did notable work there for 48 hrs. without ceasing when the “Illustrious” wounded were brought up to us one night. Many of the casualties we treated came from the R.N. Dockyard, which was bombed repeatedly and mercilessly with terrible results to behold. In the very early days of “Faith, Hope and Charity”, our three Gladiator planes, the pilots were well-known, especially one by the name of Taylor. He shot down an incredible number of planes, and the Maltese announcer used to mention him by name over the local “news”, thank him when he was successful and condole with him if he had failed to score. It was a sad day for many people when Taylor was shot down and killed. The sole survivor of those three planes – Faith – was lately presented by the R.A.F. to the Maltese people.

     When the ‘blitz’ first started, the two theatres (Main and Barrack) worked independently, and Miss Albrecht and I did alternate nights on duty in the Main. But the work became so heavy and continuous that we combined, and each of the theatre sisters was then on duty every fourth night. I have two or three vivid little pictures photographed in my mind. One is of myself, eating my Christmas dinner at 9 p.m. in the pantry among the pots and pans. I had rushed over “between cases,” and rushed back to continue, having had no time to change into evening dress and join the other Sisters. Another, of a heavy raid during the late afternoon; I was assisting the surgeon with a head injury. I looked up at one extra heavy crash and saw a JU88 just outside the window! He was flying low over the roof and appeared to be coming in to help. I remember clutching the patients’ head and bracing myself for another crash, but nothing happened and he roared over the roof. Another vivid impression is of one Saturday morning – we had all been standing out on the balcony watching the raid come in when suddenly we knew that three bombs had left the planes too late to hit the ‘dromes. We could see them shining in the bright sunlight, and we all got down as flat as we could while all Hell let loose around us. I was working with a naval sister at the time, and presently she passed me on her tummy making for the door into the theatre, and she said to me “Come along, this is no place for us!” So, head to feet, we crawled under cover, and I laughed to find two of our orderlies sitting comfortably under the Colonel’s desk having a quiet cigarette.

     Of course we were a bit hungry for a time, and it was a little un-funny when it came to counting out the slices of bread for breakfast and tea, but we always had more to eat than the civilian population, which really did starve – one tin of bully beef per family per fortnight and 9oz. of bread per day was their ration for a time.

     Almost the last raid we had was when the Sisters’ Mess was hit and straddled at 5 a.m. No one was killed, but two Sisters were badly injured and we had to dig a couple of them from under debris. Amidst all the wreckage of one delightful mess, dust, water from broken pipes, glass, blocks of stone and general ____  [missing word] a little motto still hung on the wall in Matron’s damaged bedroom, triumphantly asserting – although a little askew – “Don’t worry, it may not happen.” And that I think was the spirit in which we worked and carried on. Miss Albrecht did a wonderful piece of work in organising the work of the theatre, and I shall always be grateful for the chance of working with her. Her courage was immense, and undaunted she carried through a most difficult task.

     I do hope that out of this somewhat heterogeneous mass of material there may be something you can use. I am not a writer, and have just tried to write the letter you wanted, and I have put down the incidents as they came into my head. I must emphasise that none of us thought at any time that we underwent hardships and difficulties greater than those experienced by other Sisters on active service elsewhere – except when one alert lasted 36 hours, and we did think that rather a record.

Yours very sincerely,
K. M. Carver