‘Oh, you’ll have enough to do, love.’

But we at least had an illusion of safety here, the generous layers of the hospital stacked above us.

Hurriedly I hung up my coat and pinned on my white cap, feeling at home now, able to be competent. Doctors, already looking exhausted, were scurrying between the new arrivals in the reception area. ‘Fractured tibia – needs casting’, ‘This one – theatre – quickly’, ‘That one can hang on for a bit’.

Nurses were collecting valuables from the wounded, writing rapid notes on casualty record cards and trying to exude calmness and reassurance. There were already more casualties coming in.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ one of the other nurses demanded as she rushed past me.

‘I got caught out in it.’

She didn’t comment further on my lateness. ‘At least you can hear ours going out there.’

It was always a great boost to people to be able to hear the ack-ack guns, though we had no idea how accurate they were. Our defence was comforting. We were fighting back. But it was hard, even while rushing to and fro paying attention to the job you were doing, not to strain your ears, constantly wondering what was going on outside, wondering how close they were. Often we felt the vibrations of the bombs’ impact.

I was sent to theatre to help prepare trolleys. I recited the items in my mind trying to keep my thoughts away from the bombing, from my parents, both out there working. Saline, hydrogen peroxide, sterilized dressing drum, Cheatle’s forceps, tray of instruments, bandages, iodine . . . the reassurance of routine.

I’d no sooner got going on that, though, when Sister hurried over to me. ‘Nurse Munro, we need you to come and help with some of the new arrivals . . .’ and once I’d got started on that one of the doctors sent me scurrying back and forth for dressings. As I completed this task we heard a loud groan of pain from one of the two men lying to the side of the reception area waiting for further attention.

‘Nurse!’

‘Go and see,’ the doctor ordered me.

A middle-aged man, face a ghastly white, was lying stoically pressing a pad to his wounded head. When I approached him, he said, ‘I’m all right love. You see to ’im.’

The sounds of distress were coming from the younger man beside him. He had a padded dressing which had been hastily applied to his left cheek and was already bloodstained. The clothing had been cut from his upper torso, presumably because it was soaked in blood. There was no other apparent injury to his body.

I bent down beside him. ‘What’s the matter?’

Few of our patients made much of a to-do when they came in. Some, of course, were very frightened or in pain, but many of them were in shock and lay there numbly like sacrificial lambs.

‘God,’ he groaned. ‘I’m in such bloody agony.’ He twitched his body angrily from side to side. ‘I can’t stand it. It was numb to begin with, but now it’s getting worse every minute.’ He spoke painfully out of the side of his mouth, trying not to move the left side of his face.