NEW DELHI: British V.A.D. nurses who have just arrived in Poona from Britain are among some of the most tried and blitz-ed workers of the war. They are ‘Voluntary Aid Detachment’ nurses — girls who have taken to nursing for the duration [of the war].

In their hospital training they have had to adapt themselves to the circumstances of war and it has given them hard practical experience. They are well able to tend [to] the sick and wounded from the Eastern front; for their previous work has been to the tune of screaming bombs, the roar of explosions and the crash of falling buildings — all of which were in a night’s work [for them].

Many of the V.A.D. were introduced to Lady Colville, wife of the Governor of Bombay, when she visited their quarters at a military hospital in Kirkee recently. One of them, 22-year-old Miss Gillian Mary Davison, a London girl, spent two years in the London docks area dealing with casualties in air-raid shelters.

She met flying bombs too, and says: “It may not be the experience of others, but I found there were less serious casualties than from ordinary bombs — more injuries from flying glass than broken limbs.” (Dawn, Delhi)

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2014