We walked behind her, all eyes on her rotund derrière for a moment. Clearly, Matron was not fond of a tight corset. She swung her wide hips with the vigour that made me proud to be a woman. Mother would be shocked, but then Mother didn’t think we should be fighting for the vote, or saying one single word against sending our brothers to be blown to pieces in the war, or objecting to us women getting half the pay of men for the same job.

We followed Matron into the first-class dining room, now converted into an intensive care ward. Here, the seriously wounded would stay. We presented our papers to the chief medical officer, along with our blood group card. I was O, the most common and the most needed. The transfusion procedure was a new and marvellous thing that saved many lives. The technique consisted of two glass tubes, one inserted into the donor, the other into the recipient, with a length of rubber hose between. The very idea of having to do this horrified me, and I was relieved when Matron assured us it was only on a voluntary basis.

The first-class staterooms accommodated the hospital elite: doctors, medical corps officers, the chaplain, and Matron herself, of course. We VADs, nurses and orderlies resided in third-class cabins at the front of F deck. My cabinmate, Nurse Josephine, and our neighbours – trainee nurses, Barbara, Joan and Patricia – were great fun. Together, the five of us settled in, sure we would become friends for life. F deck was a fine place to be, until they raised or lowered the anchor. Then, the ribs and girders of the Britannic transferred that peculiar cacophony through our accommodation.

A magnificent din also struck up when the stokers’ shift changed. The spiral staircase leading down to the firemen’s tunnel was right behind our cabin. The coalmen, in hobnailed boots, clomped up a racket at the change of each shift. Up and down the metal steps they clattered with no regard for the tremendous noise that rang in our ears.

When the stomping stopped, and I broke the silence with a sigh of relief, the monstrous watertight fire doors below us trundled to a close with a final thud that shook third class. As we worked twelve-hour shifts, we only suffered the stokers’ racket once every twenty-four hours. Just to have a bed would be bliss, and sharing a bathroom hardly mattered.

Dinner was almost formal, and held in the grand dining room. Four hundred medical staff dined together. As we ate, I imagined how marvellous it would be to travel as a passenger on the ship. I felt homesick from time to time, and dreamed of Mother’s delicious toad in the hole.