In the early 1960’s, after the completing my General Nursing and Midwifery education, I, like many of my colleagues, enjoyed a six week trip on board the ‘Fair Sky’ to Britain. During that trip eight of us became friendly and maintained that friendshi for the three years we were away. As we moved to and fro to Europe, there was always someone who had room for us to stay, even if it meant at times sleeping on the floor.
Australian Nurses were very popular and another friend and myself joined the British Nurses Association. We were able to work for short times in many places across England and in different clinical settings of our choosing. I chose to spend a few months as an Industrial Nurse at Fauldings Manufacturing Group at Tootingbeck as I could work 9-5 Monday to Friday. On one occasion I had to climb a fire escape ladder to help to recover an unconscious man.
In Oxford, my friend met a German professor and his dentist wife. They had been housed in Oxford during the war. In appreciation they returned each year for some time to provide a service free of charge where needed. An invitation was offered to us to go to Germany to work with the Professor’s unit at Gottingen University. It was a clinical research area related to Polio. A number species were used for their experiments, namely monkeys, rats and chooks.
We were paid as Enrolled Nurses whilst we waited for our German translated copies of qualifications to be accepted and shared a house with a Japanese professor. In order to pay in lieu of rent, I did the English correspondence for the Professor.
My friend stayed with the Professor’s unit and I was offered the post as the nurse to a Diplomat’s wife who was in an Iron Lung. A cousin of the Neurology Professor, her husband had been a diplomat in the USA for two years. They were then sent to Africa where my patient contracted Polio, hence the Lung. Her husband was then stationed in Paris with the children.
The University was six kilometers from the division of East and West Germany. An English Doctor took us out to see that division. We were confronted by a huge barbed wire wall around a cleared field and very high towers which housed two guards. Not even a mouse could pass across the area without being seen and live to tell the tale. A stream was on the other side of the path and big signs carried the warning that half way across was the East! You entered at your peril.
My patient was able to come out of the Lung for a few hours each day and was supported by a Bird Respirator as she lay on a bed. This respirator came out of the developments leading to space travel in the USA. Mr Bird saw the patient twice while I was with her. The ultimate aim was to develop a back pack styled respirator which allowed her to spend most of the day out of the lung and to return to her family in Paris with appropriate care.
One day I left my patient watching the television and went out to get her afternoon tea. I had just reached the room to make the tea when there was a great noise and people began running and calling out in German. I returned to my patient to find out what it was about. She was greatly disturbed, so I got my orderly to help return her to the Lung. She kept repeating, ‘Husband, husband, want to talk to husband’. I rang him, passing the telephone to her. My little German did not allow me to get any idea what washappening. My patient finally calmed down, put the phone down and said ‘My husband says it is safe for you to say’.
I was there, the day that Nikita Khrushchev resigned.
My patient later went to Sweden and then to the USA. She wrote to me from America to say that she had made great progress.
I had declined an invitation to go with my patient as I had spent five months in Germany and wished to see other countries. My friend and I then went to Holland and worked at the Wilhelmenia General Hospital. My friend met a young man and remained there for two years. I left Holland after three months and then spent the next three months at Perugia University in Italy learning Italian. I then took a ship from Rotterdam to London, where I joined three of the original group to sail home, via the Panama Canal, on the sister ship of the one on which we sailed to Britain.
I have not forgotten my time in Germany nor the sense of fear among staff members , like my orderly, who were escaped persons.
I WAS THERE
D M A Scharp
May 2017
Australian Nurses were very popular and another friend and myself joined the British Nurses Association. We were able to work for short times in many places across England and in different clinical settings of our choosing. I chose to spend a few months as an Industrial Nurse at Fauldings Manufacturing Group at Tootingbeck as I could work 9-5 Monday to Friday. On one occasion I had to climb a fire escape ladder to help to recover an unconscious man.
In Oxford, my friend met a German professor and his dentist wife. They had been housed in Oxford during the war. In appreciation they returned each year for some time to provide a service free of charge where needed. An invitation was offered to us to go to Germany to work with the Professor’s unit at Gottingen University. It was a clinical research area related to Polio. A number species were used for their experiments, namely monkeys, rats and chooks.
We were paid as Enrolled Nurses whilst we waited for our German translated copies of qualifications to be accepted and shared a house with a Japanese professor. In order to pay in lieu of rent, I did the English correspondence for the Professor.
My friend stayed with the Professor’s unit and I was offered the post as the nurse to a Diplomat’s wife who was in an Iron Lung. A cousin of the Neurology Professor, her husband had been a diplomat in the USA for two years. They were then sent to Africa where my patient contracted Polio, hence the Lung. Her husband was then stationed in Paris with the children.
The University was six kilometers from the division of East and West Germany. An English Doctor took us out to see that division. We were confronted by a huge barbed wire wall around a cleared field and very high towers which housed two guards. Not even a mouse could pass across the area without being seen and live to tell the tale. A stream was on the other side of the path and big signs carried the warning that half way across was the East! You entered at your peril.
My patient was able to come out of the Lung for a few hours each day and was supported by a Bird Respirator as she lay on a bed. This respirator came out of the developments leading to space travel in the USA. Mr Bird saw the patient twice while I was with her. The ultimate aim was to develop a back pack styled respirator which allowed her to spend most of the day out of the lung and to return to her family in Paris with appropriate care.
One day I left my patient watching the television and went out to get her afternoon tea. I had just reached the room to make the tea when there was a great noise and people began running and calling out in German. I returned to my patient to find out what it was about. She was greatly disturbed, so I got my orderly to help return her to the Lung. She kept repeating, ‘Husband, husband, want to talk to husband’. I rang him, passing the telephone to her. My little German did not allow me to get any idea what washappening. My patient finally calmed down, put the phone down and said ‘My husband says it is safe for you to say’.
I was there, the day that Nikita Khrushchev resigned.
My patient later went to Sweden and then to the USA. She wrote to me from America to say that she had made great progress.
I had declined an invitation to go with my patient as I had spent five months in Germany and wished to see other countries. My friend and I then went to Holland and worked at the Wilhelmenia General Hospital. My friend met a young man and remained there for two years. I left Holland after three months and then spent the next three months at Perugia University in Italy learning Italian. I then took a ship from Rotterdam to London, where I joined three of the original group to sail home, via the Panama Canal, on the sister ship of the one on which we sailed to Britain.
I have not forgotten my time in Germany nor the sense of fear among staff members , like my orderly, who were escaped persons.
I WAS THERE
D M A Scharp
May 2017