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in Alexandria 1942 |
In Naples in 1944 |
Ireland 1985 |
I started of this
biography knowing very little about my mother's life before about 1940. As
events unfolded I got to know more about her than I had expected or intended.
The first basic when researching someone's life is to get the appropriate
birth, marriage and death certificates. Today online ordering on the Internet
has make this very easy. I soon discovered that my mother's birth certificate
shows she was born on 26th June 1915, but her parents were not actually
married until 1919
In addition, very
strangely, the birth was being shown as registered by Evan Pugh in 1935, that
is when Jane Pugh was 20 years old. This certificate states her to be the
daughter of Evan Pugh and Cissie Ann Pugh.
Current law states
that if the baby’s parents were not married to each other at the time
of the birth then only the mother is the qualified informant. The father will
not be able to register the birth on his own. If the mother is not married
to the baby’s father, then the father’s details are not included
in the register, unless the child's father is both present at the registration,
and consents to his being named on the child's birth certificate.
During the early years of registration many births were not registered because
it was not compulsory and there was no penalty for failure to comply. This
was especially true for children of illegitimate birth. In 1875, it became
compulsory. There was a six-week (42 days) time limit in which to register
a birth. After six weeks and up to six months the birth could be registered
on payment of a fine. After that time, with very few exceptions, a birth could
not be registered. It was fairly common for parents to adjust the birth date
to within 42 days. Also, as part of the 1875 changes, a mother, when reporting
an illegitimate birth, could not name the father; he had to be present and
consent to his name being entered.
Change of name - A
child may have been illegitimate and registered under his mother's maiden name
but changed this upon her subsequent marriage. Changing a child's surname from
the mother's surname to the father's surname (if the parents have married since
the birth of the child) can be done. The birth can be re-registered to show the
child as a child of the parents' marriage. Upon re-registration, the child's
surname can be changed to that of the father and a new birth certificate can be
purchased.
I assumed that this
is what happened in mother's case, so my hunch was to look at all children
born in mid 1915 with mother's name Evans. There is one Jane P Evans listed
with mother as Evans. I sent off for that birth certificate. My request was
queried by the National Statistical Office, who wanted to know why I wanted
it and required I prove my credentials. Eventually they responded saying that
they would let me have the the original certificate.
The original duly
arrived. The place of birth is the same as the reissued certificate from 1935,
but the name of the father is left blank, her mother is Cissie Ann Evans a
General Servant (Domestic) but interestingly she was named as "Jane Pugh
Evans", so Cissie Ann obviously knew that the father was a Pugh. One
is still left to speculate as to what happened to delay a wedding until 1919.
Was Evan Pugh dragging his feet on getting involved in married life, or did
he just not know that he had fathered a child, as he was working in the mines
in South Wales during the war.
Evan Pugh was born 1896, so was only 18 in 1914 when my mother was conceived. Cissey Evans was born 1892, so was 22 when my mother was conceived. Evan's brother Hugh was born 1890
The black sheep of the family was Hugh Silvannus Pugh, one of Evan Pugh's older brothers. He boarded the Hesperian in Liverpool on the 16th April 1915 bound for Canada. It seems to be a significant date just 2 months before Jane Pugh was born. Some months later on 4th September 1915 the Hesperian was torpedoed off Fastnet by the German submarine U.20, the same U-boat that sank the Lusitania. Hugh married Sarah Humphreys in 1929 and the 1942 WW11 draft record in California shows a Sally Pugh living at the same address. They had no children. My feeling is that he was the fathe of my mother, and that after the war Evan Pugh's parents put pressure on him to marry Cissy Evans and rear Jane - it can never be proven unless someone in the family can say what happened.
Jane
went to school at Bangor County School for Girls (opened in 1897 with a number
of scholarship places, and I assume she had one of these, as her father was
a "general labourer" at that time). She remembered that the school
took them up Mount Snowdon to see the 1927 solar eclipse. The path of totality
passed from Penrhyn Llyn across to Colwyn Bay shortly after sunrise. The eclipse
in North Wales, and especially Caernarvonshire, was a fiasco, rain and clouds
in the majority of places blotting the spectacle from the view of many thousands
of visitors.
A contemporary
newspaper report states
" The much
vaunted vantage points on mountain and hilltops were a complete failure, particularly
so on the summit of Snowdon, where the cold was intensified by blinding rain,
clammy mist, and biting wind. Many visitors, including a number of children
suffered from exposure at these points. Disappointment was deepest among the
school children, thousands of whom had travelled many miles by night. Tired,
cold, and not a little fretful, the only compensation for their weary vigil
was the sudden deepening of the gloom which heralded the period of totality,
and this was gone almost as quickly as it came. In few places was the sun
visible, and where observations were possible visibility only lasted a few
minutes.
Hundreds of
people from all parts of England and Wales made their way to Llanberis on
Tuesday, and throughout the day, especially in the evening, traffic was very
heavy. All the hotels and boarding houses were full of visitors eager to go
up Snowdon by foot and by train.
However, the
weather conditions were bad and consequently there were fewer people on the
mountain than there would have been had it been fine. The railway ran some
two hundred people comprising villagers and visitors. A large party braved
the elements on foot, and when they reached the summit they were drenched
to the skin. The two wooden huts which constitute the Summit Hotel were overcrowded,
and some had to stay outside the whole time. Many did not go beyond the half
way.
The summit,
however, was enveloped in fog, and nothing was seen except the dark shadow:
"Although everywhere was covered by fog," said Mr. Owens, "it
was a great sight to see the darkness coming gradually until the whole place
was absolutely black."
Another villager,
who was on the summit, said, "The summit was covered with mist, and
some time before totality the mist was seen gradually to darken and its colour
became heliotrope. It was an awe-inspiring sensation to see the mist becoming
this colour, and I did not regret taking the long and tiresome journey to
the summit." He added that the place was completely dark for some
seconds and immediately after totality the mist suddenly changed colour to
very pale yellow. "
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She then taught
in Aberystwyth as the family had moved to there by the time she qualified.
It is believed that she found that she did not like teaching, and switched
to train as a nurse.
With friends in Snowdonia in 1939
She started her
nursing training
on 24 March 1934, when she was 19. Nursing was a 4 year training period. She
was attached to a school of nursing (Walton Hospital Liverpool), lived in
a nurses home and nearly all her training would have been on the wards. They
would have been overseen by SRN's, the ward Sister and good old Matron. Her
nursing registration is dated 26th December 1937 (Reg no. 91026)
at Walton Hospital Liverpool, which means that this was when she finished
her training and passed her final exams. Certificate of membership to RCN
21st April 1938 (Membership number 35775), was the point that she
was officially a SRN. Walton Hospital M614 WAL/15/1 has the nursing records,
but I have been unable to get there to access them.
When she joined Territorial Army Nursing Service on 7 October 1938, her matron is given as Miss Paton, 12 Preston Road, Southport. Her army record number is P/215179X. Her official date of enrolment was 4 April 1939. The 1939 Register gives her as a Private Nurse living at 12 Preston Rd, Southport with a number of nurses and Miss Paton
A last visit home in 1940
And she joined a unit on
26 Feb 1940. She was later granted a commission in TANS on 30 May 1941, and
that appeared in the London Gazette on 13 Feb 1942 She was in the TANS
(Territorial Army Nursing Service) during the war and served as a Lieutenant
Interestingly just
about the first thing she had to do on joining the army was to be taught to
be an officer and a lady. There was a posting to Oxford for around 3 months,
living in the Mitre Hotel, learning how to eat in the Mess, wear dress uniform,
and so on. Standards were apparently kept up in the army in the early days
of the war.
The left hand photo was annotaed that it was training in the garden of 13 Merton St, Oxford
Training in Oxford finished, she was ready for war.
The card below
records in her own hand her war travels
"Left Grenock
in Scotland, June 1940 on the Queen Mary, before she had been adapted as a
troop ship. Had a lovely state cabin. Went via the Azores and Freetown in
N. Africa, went ashore in Capetown, then on to Celon. Left Q. Mary there.
That was the end of luxury for many years! Went on from there in awful little
ship. Went ashore in Bombay, then on up Red Sea to Suez. Then by train to
Palestine, where I stayed till Nov 1940. In November, back by train to Egypt.
Joined ship in Alexandria for Greece. Many, many bombings followed. In Kiffisia
from November to end of April 1941. Germans arrived. Left by rowing boat to
find British warship. Eventually arrived in Crete. Slept out in the open.
Tended hundreds of wounded in tents and on the fields. Germans arrived there
too - by parachute. Left and went to Cairo with absolutely nothing! Rekitted
and posted to Alex. There for two years through Alamein Then Tripoli, Naples.
In 1944 back via Gibraltar."
A postcard on which Jane Pugh wrote about her war
experiences
She had joined the
Territorial Army Nursing Service, which later became amalgamated with the
Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps (Q.A.R.A.N.C). Both of these
units provided qualified nursing support at all levels. During the war their
personnel could be found anywhere in the world where Army medical Services
were required. Jane was appointed to the 26th British Southern General Hospital.
The ‘sisters,’ as they were called, had officer status and at
first were very self-conscious about being saluted.
She left Oxford
by train to join the Middle East Liberation Force. When she received orders
to entrain, she was not allowed to tell anyone that she was leaving because
of wartime censorship. She wrote a letter to her parents, telling them she
would be away for a long time, put a stamp on the envelope, and a note asking
any finder to post it. The letter was thrown out as the train passed Crewe
Station, and remarkably reached her parents. The unit travelled by overnight
train to Gourock, in Scotland, where they went on board the Queen Mary ready
to embark at mid-day. Accommodation was four to a cabin. On board they shared
duties in the ‘ship’s hospital’ and had to take part in
further training ready for the desert operations. There was very little free
time.
Queen Mary in wartime colour
On 21 March 1940
the Queen Mary had received orders to sail for Sydney from her temporary home
in New York harbour, to be outfitted for trooping duties. In preparation for
the voyage, many of the ornate fixtures aboard were removed and armaments
were added. Among the armaments added were “20mm Oerlikon antiaircraft
cannons, 12 rocket launchers, range finders, and a central gun-control house.”
At Sydney the remainder of her luxury fittings were removed and she was fitted
with berths to accommodate 5,500 troops. Later years would see this number
nearly triple to 16,000. Hitler placed a bounty on the Queen Mary, promising
to pay $250,000 and award the Iron Cross with Oak Cluster to any U-boat captain
that could sink her
Leaving Sydney on
5 May 1940, Queen Mary was part of a convoy responsible for transporting Australian
troops from Sydney to Gourock, her Scottish port during the war. She arrived
without incident at Gourock on June 16 1940. Jane had an officers menu cards
from the Queen Mary dated Wednesday June 26 1940, which was her 25th birthday.
Troops, including
Jane Pugh's group of nursing sisters, embarked on the Queen Mary by tender
- there were 35 ships in the convoy, the Queen Mary was the fastest. The convoy
was to travel in a zigzag, heading for South Africa. She left Gourock on 29
June 1940 under the command of Capt. Irving, and sailed for Singapore carrying
troops to bolster its defence in view of Japan's increasing threat. She reached
Freetown 9 July 1940, Capetown on 17th July Table Mountain - a winderful sight, most impressed", Simonstown on 19th July, where
she spent 10 days before departing for Trincomalee. The Queen Mary had to
moor at Simonstown. The passengers were allowed to go ashore in Cape Town
for a day. When they returned to the ship, they found that the Queen Mary
had been moved in to deeper water. They had to be ferried out to the liner,
where they then had to scramble up the sides on ropes; a nerve racking experience.
The officers' " Farewell Dinner" was held on H.T Queen Mary Sunday
July 28 1940.
Trincomalee was
reached on 1st August 1940. The journey had taken some 33 days, and while
at sea the Queen Mary had averaged just over 20 knots. They were allowed to
go on shore and had the luxury of going to the Grand Orient Hotel for dinner.
On their return the liner sailed into mid-ocean, so that the troops and nurses
could be transshipped to the Karagola, to take them to Egypt.
Contemporary photo of Karapara, a sister ship of
Karagola, and the same tonnage.
The Karagola sailed
up the west coast of India to Bombay, where they all transshipped again, this
time to the Khedive Ismail, described by Jane as "an awful little ship".
Khedive Ismail was later sunk by a Japanese submarine
in 1944 with 1300 British deaths
The 7,513 ton steamship
Khedive Ismail was launched as the Aconcagua by Scotts of Greenock in 1922.
The Aconcagua passed into Egyptian ownership and was renamed after Khedive
Ismail, a previous ruler of Egypt. In 1940 the Khedive Ismail was requisitioned
as a British troopship. This was not a luxurious voyage, as the ship was overcrowded
with troops and equipment. They crossed the Arabian Sea in convoy. The ship
ran short of drinking water, so it left the convoy with one destroyer as escort
and called at Port Sudan. Arriving there at 7 am in the morning, on August
20 1940, the nurses were allowed on shore on the promise that they would buy
toupees to protect themselves from the sun. They embarked again in the afternoon,
when their ship had taken onboard sufficient water and re-joined the convoy.
Their sea journey came to an end on August 23, when they disembarked at Port
Taufiq on the Suez Canal. By now they had been at sea for two months.
They crossed the Suez Canal at midnight 23 Aug 1940and had supper on the edge of the Sinai Desert under canvas at Kantara. They left at 3am
The next part of
the journey was by train from Port Said to Gaza, in Palestine. The unit was
taken to an army camp at Sarafand. The village of Sarafand, or Sarepta, is
located 15 km south of Sidon. In the Old Testament, it is stated that the
Prophet Elijah visited Sarafand. Sarafand is also known for being the site of
two of the miracles of Jesus Christ.
It was a tented
hospital built by the Arabs. It was so hot that the tents would sometimes
spontaneously burst into flames in the intense heat. The nurses lived in tents
while huts were built for their accommodation. The Arabs slept in the bungalows
while they were under construction. Their mattresses would be ‘alive’
with vermin and so a routine was established to de-bug the beds; every Monday
the mattresses would be put outside the building, the ants would then arrive
and devour the bugs. Everyone slept under mosquito nets but they were no defence
against bed bugs. The Arabs had to be watched too as they would steal anything;
patients’ pay books and valuables placed under their pillows would still
disappear while they were sleeping. Concrete baths were built (but no showers),
if you were lucky you had a sheet to put in the bath to make it more comfortable.
Strangely, there was never any shortage of water and this despite having four
or five baths a day when the weather was at it’s hottest. The patients,
at this time, were mostly Australian soldiers; at first malaria was rife but
later diphtheria and skin conditions (aggravated by the sun and sand) needed
to be treated.
On 10 November
1940 the 26th General Hospital was posted to Greece, and went by train to
Alexandria in Egypt, and hence by troopship to Athens in Greece Where "after a series of noisy and unpleasant episodes in poert" arrived in Athens in the early hours of 17 November 1940. The hospital was opened on 26 November
1940 with 110 beds and was at Kiffisia is on the northern outskirts of Athens.
Initially life was very pleasant. The Greeks were pleased to see the Sisters
and they were received cordially everywhere. Here Jane developed a taste for
Mavrodaphne wine, a sweet fortified wine produced from a grape of the same
name. She also became engaged to a British officer. He was later killed in
the retreat from Greece. For fairly obvious reasons, little was told about
this in the family as she later married another RAMC officer, Alan
Grant, and I cannot substantiate any details. The nursing staff were housed
in three private hotels, which were very comfortable, except in the early
days when there was a bitterly cold winter
The brief of 26 British General Hospital is detailed in the Matron's report was to set up a hospital to treat the Greek casualties from the guerrilla war that they were fighting against the Italians. The Matron was Phyllis Elsie Chretina Sharpe of Territorial Army Nursing Service, who was awarded a 1sr Class Royal Red Cross Medal for the evacuation. The British were given the use of three hotels for their hospital, Cecil (surgical cases), Olympus (dental, ent), and Aphergis (medical cases). The hotels were emptied of furniture, and the large rooms made suitable wards. Jane Pugh was based in the Cecil Hotel caring for the surgical cases.
Princess Marina
of Greece visited the hospital on 10th December 1940. Christmas 1940 was a
time for celebration and rejoicing.
On 2nd January 1941 they heard they were to take Greek wounded. Medical care for the Greek fighters in the mountains had been virtually non-existent. It took a week to get the wounded down from the mountains, where often snow was starting to fall. Their wounds were often septic, their bodies crawled with lice and fleas, and many suffered from frostbite as well. The men had to be shaved, washed, disinfested, and dirty bandages replaced by clean, before they could be taken into the wards. 16 January 1941, General Wavell inspected the hospital. 18 January 1941 Air Chief Marshall Longmore, AOC in C, Air HQ Middle East/Middle East Command inspects it.
Air raids started on 19 January 1941. Greek wounded first arrived on 24 January. At first the atmosphere was rather strained, the Greeks not knowing what to make of their British nurses. Feeding them was a problem, quantities of bread and food soaked in oil was all that was required. But after a week there was an extraordinary change in the patients' attitudes. Washing was not popular with the Greeks, but the Sisters persevered. Matron reports going into one ward and finding a whole row of patients stripped to the waist. One was having a shampoo and he appeared to be enjoying it!. Their wounds were very grim and they were "fortunate to lose only one patient". The Aphergis was used for the Greeks and the Cecil for the British. The nurses found the language difficult, "but it was wonderful how soon we made ourselves understood".
11 February 1941 saw a visit from Princess
Fredrika, wife of Crown Prince. There was an air raid in the middle of her
visit. Then on 15 February a visit by Princess Nicholas and Princess Katrine.
The former is said to have had a wonderful sense of humour. She tasted a meat
pie in the kitchen, and pronounced it "very good". On 1 March there
was an earthquake further north in Greece, but the hospital was not effected
by it. And in
March 1941 German troops crossed into Bulgaria, and took up ominous positions
along the Yugoslav and Greek borders.
On 3 April, 3 days
before Germany declared war on Greece, there were over 600 patients in the
hospital. The
anticipated German attack (Unternehmen Marita) began on April 6 1941, against
both Greece and Yugoslavia. The resulting "Battle of Greece" resulted
in the fall of Athens on April 27 and ended with the fall of Kalamata in the
Peloponnese on April 30, the evacuation of the Commonwealth Expeditionary
Force and the complete occupation of the Greek mainland by the Axis.
Within days of the German invasion 26 General Hospital was the only functioning military hospital in Greece. Soon bed space was scarce, tents were erected in the grounds as extra wards, and these had neither water supply nor sluices. The nurses worked like machines, admitting patients, preparing them for surgery, washing, feeding them then evacuating them. German air attacks on the Thessalonica to Athens road increased, and the sound of guns could be heard at Kiffisia. In addition to wounded allied soldiers, wounded German soldiers were being nursed. Doctors operated day and night and wore revolvers all the time. There were air raids, but the hospital itself was never bombed, although being close to Menidi Airfield, bombs fell close by.
On 24th April Greece surrendered. Matron reports that on April 24th Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) told her that it was wiser that they remained in Greece, than risk getting away - "Personally I was far too busy to worry about it, and accepted it quite calmly". Later that day the local cook attempted suicide with quinine and aspirin, which had to be treated by stomach pump.
Ἀδελφαὶ!
Σᾶς εὐχαριστῶ πολύ διὰ τὴν περιποίησιν ποὺ μοῦ κάματε.
Ἐνθύμιον
τραυματίας Γεώργιος Ξυδιάς
Σωληνάριον - Μεσσηνίας.
Sisters! I thank you very much for the care you gave me. A memento [of] casualty Georgios Xydias [from] Solinarion [now called Soulinari], Messinia.
Finally
on 25th April the hospital was evacuated. DDMS rang at 10am to say a destroyer
might be available later in the day. Any wounded who could be moved, were
taken under air attack to the coast. There remained about 40 nursing sisters.
A silence fell as the allied guns had now all gone, and little stood between
the advancing Germans and the hospital. At 7.30pm an order came through for
the sisters themselves to evacuate. They climbed into trucks and drove for
5 hours, lit only by the thin beams of blacked-out headlights over very bad
roads, for a rendezvous with a ship at Megara Bay, some 25 miles west of the
hospital.
At 10 pm on 25 April 1941, the destroyers HMAS Vendettaand Waterhen approached Megara beach in southern Greece. There they joined the Royal Navy troopship SS Thurland Castle (6700 tons), the cruiser HMS Coventry, and the destroyer HMS Wryneck, which were waiting to embark the 5,000 assembled British and Commonwealth troops. During the nightlhours the ship Thurland Castle took 3,500 troops onboard, of whom 1,000 wounded and 100 nurses. The nurses waited in a ditch in total
silence, until it was their turn to board. They scrambled out of the ditch
and walked along the beach to a tiny jetty, and from there by small boat to
the freighter (the destroyer did not materialise). It sailed at 3am with a
Royal Navy escort.
Taken on Thurland Castle en route to Crete
However as dawn
broke the ship was attacked by German dive-bombers, and the raids were virtually
continuous for the voyage to Crete. "The noise was terrific, and it was
not very pleasant". Although there were casualties among the men on the
open decks, the vessel itself was undamaged, and was able to make a safe anchorage
at Suda Bay in Crete at 5.30pm on 26 April 1941. With an irony that only the
British Government can accomplish, her service records states that she had
a temporary posting to 7 General Hospital, Crete (the nurses were in Crete
3 days!). The nurses went straight back to duty at British General Hospital
7 there, which had been run entirely by male staff up till then, and lacked,
according to matron, the "female element". When the tented wards
in the hospital filled with new casualties, the nurses gave up their own accommodation
and slept in the open. There was a service of thanksgiving for their deliverance
from Greece, held in front of a rock draped with the Union Jack as the altar
with a simple cross and two jam jars with wild flowers. Nurses, doctors, patients
(some wheeled out in their hospital beds) all joined together to sing "Oh
God our help in ages past".
By now the only
Greek territory remaining free was the large and strategically important island
of Crete, which was held by a strong Allied garrison. To conquer it, the German
High Command prepared "Unternehmen Merkur", the largest airborne
attack seen to date.
The Sisters were
awakened at night and told to prepare for evacuation at dawn on 29th April
1941. They prepared the walking wounded and made their way to the harbour.
There an old Greek freighter, the Ionic, with a solitary Greek captain and
no crew awaited. Two Australian soldiers volunteered to do the stoking, and
it sailed for Alexandria with 160 women on board. The sisters were given the
few available cabins. They were resting places but proved very hot and stuffy
under blackout conditions at night. The voyage was a slow one. There was one
air raid at the dockside before they left Crete. The first night was one of
apprehension for there was an encounter in the middle of the night with an
enemy e-boat, but later a strong naval escort was provided and the rest of
the voyage was calm and quiet. They lived on tins of bully beef and biscuits.
There was no water for washing, and tea was made in kerosene drums. Amazingly
all the nurses who served in Greece were successfully evacuated.
From Alexandria
Jane went to Cairo, was re-kitted and posted to 63th General Hospital, where
everyone was "very kind" to them, then straight back to 8 General
Hospital on 1 July 1941 in Alexandria. She remained there for the next two
years.
Victoria College cum 64 General Hospital Alexandria
At Victoria College
School in Alexandria had been requisitioned by the British authorities, and
this became 64 General Field Hospital with 1200 beds initially. Under the
terms of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, Britain still enjoyed strategic and logistical
privileges in its former protectorate. Thus the school was turned into a naval
and military hospital (64th General Hospital), remaining off-limits to civilians
for the next four school years. Henceforth, the students would do without
their imposing buildings, the large classrooms, the great dining hall, the
incomparable grounds and the recently constructed Birley Hall (1937) with
its imposing stage and cinema.
Alexandria-1942
The Second Battle
of El Alamein marked a significant turning point in the Western Desert Campaign
of World War II. The battle lasted from October 23 to November 5, 1942. Following
the First Battle of El Alamein, which had stalled the Axis advance, General
Bernard Montgomery took command of the British Empire's Eighth Army from Claude
Auchinleck in August 1942. Success in the battle turned the tide in the North
African Campaign. Allied victory at El Alamein ended Axis hopes of occupying
Egypt, controlling access to the Suez Canal, and gaining access to the Middle
Eastern oil fields. The defeat at El Alamein marked the end of Axis expansion
in Africa.
Hospital Ship "Llandovery
In Tripoli the
nurses were allotted what had been an Italian barracks. Everything had been
deliberately broken ~ and it was filthy. The King inspected the 48th General
Hospital on 19 June 1943. However Tripoli was not that bad.
Except for sunken
ships in the harbour, neat piles of rubble cleared from bombed out areas,
the flow of military traffic, and men in uniform everywhere, Tripoli had the
aspect of a seaside resort. Once the showpiece and centre of Italy's Libya
colony, an impressive row of pompous blue-tinted Fascist-style buildings faced
in sandstone and marble lined the curved highway that rimmed the protected
harbour. There were similar large public and private buildings downtown. There
were shops where traditional artisan products could be obtained. The Mediterranean
littoral, west of Tripoli, and stretching for hundreds of miles to the east,
was intensively farmed by the skilled Italian farmers and their families who
had been encouraged to settle these lands. After the 8th Army had driven the
Afrika Korps out of Tripoli (January 1943) these farms had been cultivated
again, and a colourful open air-market displayed their goods. The army rations
were readily supplemented by an abundance of fresh fruits, vegetables, meats,
poultry, fish.
Shortly after allied
troops captured Naples on 1st October 1943 the hospital was again dismantled
and they boarded a hospital ship, which sailed to Naples. This was a pleasant
trip. The ship was brightly lit up so it would not be attacked and the accommodation
was very comfortable. They disembarked by walking over the side of one of
the wrecks lying in the harbour.
On 5 December 1943
2 British General Hospital took over the Caserta Palace, the place where Emma
(Lady Hamilton) and Nelson would stay for the weekend with the King of the
Two Sicilys. It had been a hotel for some years, and the waiters were kept
on when the place was taken over to be used as a hospital. They wore penguin
suits with the regulation napkin over their arm, and come round taking orders
for the meals. The menu seemed extensive, but was in fact bully beef, done
up in different ways.
2BGH remained at
here at Caserta (north of Naples) from December 1943 until September 1945.
2BGH had been with the 8th Army throughout the desert campaign. They started
of in Alexandria at the beginning of Wavel’s first show, Operation Compass.
Then they moved to Benghazi, then to Tripoli and Tunisia and from there to
Caserta.
2 General Hospital
became partly a tented hospital and was called upon to work to capacity. Because
of the limited number of buildings available (five wards of a total of 24
in the barracks), it was decided to place all administrative offices in tents,
and to use the indoor space entirely for patients. All the staff were accommodated
in tents. The inclement weather brought many hardships. It was cold, with
heavy rain and wind, and snow lay on the nearby hills. Many of the tents were
flooded out, but the staff cheerfully accepted their conditions and discounted
their discomforts. Sisters and nurses showed a particularly admirable spirit.
The QAs here did not wear battle dress but wore a proper uniform with the
red cape and a natty pair of desert boots.
One afternoon, March 22nd 1944, there was a sound of a huge explosion, it
was Vesuvius erupting with a huge plume of smoke. The eruption went on for
days and at night glowing lava could be seen flowing down one side of the
mountain while lightning played over the peak.
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius on March 22nd, 1944
She married Alan Grant,
a doctor in the RAMC in Naples. Marriage
Certificate
“On
The marriage certificate
shows Jane Pugh, Nursing Sister TANS of 2 British General Hospital CMF married
Alan Proctor Grant, Capt RAMC of 2(UK) CCS
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Naples 1944 |
Naples 1944 |
The
Allied Officers Club was located on hill overlooking Naples. It was described
as a beautiful club, finished in marble, with an all-around balcony upstairs
with an extra bar. The orchestra was Italian and excellent. Every imaginable
uniform present—American, British, French officers, nurses, WAC’s,
ATS, Red Cross girls, Canadians, Scotsmen dancing in kilts. Drinks were
apparently fairly good too.
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Christ Church, Naples |
Capri |
Tramontano Hotel in 1952 and in 2019
Jane and her new husband were returned to their unts. She got to Sienna in Aug 1944
The
conception of their first child, David
Grant, must have been at a Christmas leave in 1944 (he was born Sept
1945). Jane's pregnancy resulted in her being transferred back to the England
by ship, via Gibraltar in spring 1945, and subsequent demobilisation.There
was a letter from the War Office 28th March 1945 sent to Mrs J Grant 50
Bailey Road, Fenton,Burton on Trent. dealing with her resignation.
Peggy, Emrys, Oswald and their mother Cissy in 1946
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Adlington
Hall in Cheshire |
Jane with David, born 1945 |
David was off to Ireland with his mother about 6 weeks after he was born
Within a few weeks
the new family went straight to Belfast in Northern Ireland, where Alan Grant
had been brought up and had qualified as a doctor before the war. Here they
lived for a short and difficult period with her father-in-law-Charles
Grant and her mother-in-law Elsie
Proctor , before moving to a rented flat at Ardmore Terrace, Holywood,
Co Down.
Charlie born 1949, Fiona born 1951, John Evans (Jane's uncle) with Fiona, Charlie and
David Grant (Jane Pugh's children)
They moved from
there to Cherryhill, Belfast after selling 28 Sans Souci Park to the
university. There was some acrimony here as both Alan and Jane Grant felt that
the university was forcing them out with the high rise developments that they were
putting up behind the house.
After a stay in
Cherryhill for around 5 years, they moved to Killenican Hill, Killinchy, Co
Down around 1968, and Jane and Alan Grant lived there until there deaths in
the early 2000s.