It might have been attractive in summer, but walking up from the station in persistent drizzle on my first day was quite depressing. I was carrying my suitcase and wearing one of those cheap 1960s nylon raincoats, with my body heat condensing inside it.

In the Head Porter’s office I filled in my tax forms. They gave me an issue of linen (bedding, uniform and towel), told me I’d receive an allowance to buy the necessary white shoes, and showed me to my room, small and drab, in the single men’s quarters.

It was a relief to take off the raincoat, dry my hair and put my clothes and books away. The dark varnished locker reminded me of Northland College.¹ It was 2.45 and time to go on duty, so I changed into the unfamiliar uniform, put on my incongruous, wet, black, rubber-soled shoes and headed off.

The following is as shocking to me now as when I wrote it 60 years ago.

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26.7.65: I will never forget the smell of old men’s excrement, and I’m not trying to be shocking. I’m simply stating a fact.

The smell of excrement and urine pervades everything. These poor old men, as helpless as babies but with grown men’s shame. Almost the entire hospital is given over to old people, but there are a few younger ones. Ours is one of the better wards.

The hospital is scattered around the grounds in pre-fabricated semi-permanent buildings. It was originally a convalescent home for soldiers, built in World War II and later taken over by Americans as a hospital. Since then many pre-fabricated, fibrolite and board buildings have been added. The surroundings are apparently very attractive in summer, but now they’re depressing. Mind you I am not depressed.

The patients are varied. Arnold is a diabetic. One leg has been amputated, eaten away by the disease. He’s blind for the same reason. He sits in a stupor all day and the Lord knows if he thinks. He has been there seven years, and is now 41. He was friendly when he talked to me but I’ve been warned that he will do his best to get me into of trouble. Norman, also, has diabetes. He has lost both legs.

One old man got out of bed tonight and tried to get dressed, in order, he said, to go to the cemetery because it was time for him to die.

Another, not so old, is rotten with alcohol and full of bitterness. He has many fractures in his body and many in his mind.

But others surprise me with their cheerfulness and friendship. To work there eight hours is one thing, but to exist in that state 24 hours a day, day after month after year, is a dreadful thought. God bless them all.

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The hospital was established after the war to help ease the pressure on acute services and other specialist units in the region. The patients were generally long stay, mainly geriatric but also diabetic, orthopaedic and so on.

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28.7.65: After 24 hours on duty I find our ward a much more cheerful state. I’ve discovered the men under the vegetating senility in many cases. One hardly notices the bodies.

We have an easy ward, I am told, and as far as I can see, this is true. Many, in fact most, of the patients are mobile to some extent, and some are not old, but ordinary people in for physiotherapy. All this makes for less work, less depression, more friendliness and more happiness.

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30.7.65: A Medical Orderly’s round consists of dishing out meals, feeding the incapable before cleaning and shaving them, changing bedpans, bottles and sputum mugs, bathing bodies, and above all cleaning backsides. First you check for and discover your messed bed. It doesn’t offend me any more. I’m getting used to the smell, and sometimes it seems healthy: warm and aromatic like compost. You wipe up, change the bedsheets etc., wash dry and anoint with Ung. Vita.

If you have any soul you salute with conversation the humanity of the body you service, even if it doesn’t reply.

Then you take the bedding down to the Heavily Soiled Linen bag.

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31.7.65: I took Norman, the blind diabetic with one leg, down to the bathroom, started the water and began to undress him. When his metal leg and clothes were off and the water was ready, I went to get Nigel to help lift him into the bath. Nigel said he’d almost finished his work and was ready to help, so I left Norman, who is capable of looking after himself, and I went to get Gordon, who is 93, almost stone deaf and a great fighter still, although almost completely incapable. He is a grand old man.

I wheeled him down to the bathroom to the second bath while Nigel finished his previous job and followed us down. By the time I’d taken off Gordon’s dressing gown and pajama top Nigel had arrived, so we stood Gordon up, took off his wet trousers and slid him into the bath. Then, since Arnold had finished and was ready to get out, we lifted him out and wrapped him in a body sheet in his wheelchair.

“You look after Gordon,” I said to Nigel, “while I dry Norman.”

I dried Norman, and then became engrossed in replacing his leg, which I’d never had anything to do with before. Halfway on with the leg and the clothes, the silence from the neighbouring bath struck me.

“I’ll just finish putting the shirt on, Norman,” I said, “and go and see how Gordon is going.”

We finished with the shirt and I stepped around the corner into the other cubicle.

Gordon was lying slipped right down into the bath with his head under the water, on his right side, absolutely still except for his right fist, which he had clenched and was rubbing convulsively against his brow. Nigel was nowhere to be seen.

I think I said Oh God, and grabbed the old man under the arms and pulled him above the water. He took a great watery, rattling gulp of air, and then began to breathe through his nose, heavily. His throat and nasal passages were full of water. I couldn’t lift him out, so I pulled the plug, waited until it was low enough to be safe and ran to get Nigel. We lifted him out, the poor old beggar, and into the wheelchair.

 He looked at me — me — and said, “What the bloody hell were you doing?

“You bloody bastard,” he said in a voice like a rasp.

But he was not hurt. A near thing.

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There’s  a newspaper story describing how the first patients and staff were moved in by convoys of army field ambulances in November 1944 .

“Of the patients, 99 were stretcher cases and 81 able to walk with assistance. There were 122 old people, some exceedingly frail, and 58 young people who have been receiving orthopaedic treatment. The young were lively and excited, the old inclined to be bewildered at this abrupt departure from hospital routine.”

If you search newspaper clippings from those days you’ll find the listings full of death notices and thanks to the staff.

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Yes, thanks to the staff — people who don’t make news, the ones I call the “real” people. People we take for granted. The people who make the world go round. The nurses, nurse aides, orderlies and porters, the kitchen staff, the maintenance guys. The people I worked or hung around with there, who helped me grow up a bit, and the patients I helped care for.

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