‘What if something happens while everyone’s away?’ I asked. ‘Shall I come and get you?’ Even I knew this was an imprudent thing to say, begging for catastrophe to pounce the moment I was left alone.

‘No. Don’t come interrupting the meeting. Use your initiative, Smith,’ she replied brusquely. ‘You’ll be fine. What can possibly go wrong with six invalids who are hardly at death’s door and half a dozen bedpans, in half an hour?’

My thoughts went to the island of Lemnos where, we’d been told, four thousand casualties awaited our arrival at the port of Mudros. We would arrive later today. I couldn’t imagine that number of injured men. Where would Matron put them all? The Britannic only had three and a half thousand cots in her wards.

I would be up to my elbows in bedpans.

I called on our Sissy for strength, knowing my responsibilities were a test. In the back of my mind, I could hear her bold voice. Come on, Gertie, you’re my sister; dig deep and find your courage. Don’t let the side down, for God’s sake! How can we claim equal pay and equal respect as women if we can’t even deal with a little stink or unpleasantness? There are plenty of eighteen-year-old soldiers suffering far more for their king and country!

Then, I found myself alone with the six male patients. My heart thumped as though I was surrounded by a threatening gang. They would know, of course, that I was a fraud. I was no more a nurse than I was a twenty-three-year-old. I felt their eyes on me, like crows around a chicken carcass. Don’t look at them. Sweat drenched my armpits. Their eyes scrutinised my body whichever way I turned.

I heard Sissy’s voice: Collect the bedpans and hide away in the sluice room, Gertie.

The men made the most of my naïvety.

‘Nurse, I have a terrific swelling, could you take a look?’ one cried, which brought much laughter, but left me mortified. Every time I bent down to collect a pan, they clucked or whistled. I was desperate to get out of that ward. I’d just stacked the ward’s porcelain pots by the door when Perkins called.

‘Nurse, my dressing’s drying up!’ My face was already in flames, and I was in such a state by that point, it wouldn’t have taken much to set my tears off. The sandy-haired engineer who’d called me over had suffered a damaged arm when a jack failed and a wheel hub crashed down on his humerus.