The Real Band of Brothers: First-hand accounts from the last British survivors of the Spanish Civil War

I didn’t quite know what to do. I couldn’t go back to school in the evening for quite a while, but eventually I plucked up courage. I knew I was going to tell a lie—and I met Mr Turner, and he said, ‘Miss Phelps, I’m sorry we missed you.’

And I said, ‘I didn’t know your address or where you lived, so I couldn’t tell you that I wasn’t well.’ That was the only excuse I could make.

He said, ‘Oh, well, perhaps another time,’ but, from that time on, when he mentioned the wife, that made me mad—because I had a very quick temper.

When I got home I went for my sister. I said, ‘He wasn’t trying it on—he was married and had a nice wife—and they went there to meet me, and you spoilt it all.’ But still he took an interest in me, and so did his wife—they were the first people who really encouraged me.

During the next two years I visited the Turners frequently, and both Mr and Mrs Turner continued to take a real interest in my career, helping with all possible advice. Mrs Turner helped me to become more human by getting me to moderate my religious tendencies. I had always said cinemas were sinful, but Mrs Turner said she could see I was not happy—that I oughtn’t to go on leading a dull and uninteresting life. I denied this, saying that I was perfectly happy—but without conviction. Then, one day, I broke the rule and went with the Turners to the cinema, feeling frightfully guilty about it, but very soon this sense of guilt passed. Once I had broken through this one restriction, others went too, though it was still some years before I went to the theatre.

One day Mr Turner said to me ‘Miss Phelps, wouldn’t you like to change your job from working in factories?’

I said, ‘What can I do?’

He said, ‘You could do an office job.’

I said, ‘But I’m not trained to do it—the arithmetic.’ But he and his wife helped me quite a lot.

Then, one evening, with the Turners’ advice, I made the decision to try to become a nurse. I was of an age now to do nursing, and I applied to the Homerton Hospital to do that because they took people a bit younger. I was too young for general nursing training, but not too young to do fever nursing. Following my application, I received a letter telling me I had been accepted on trial as a probationer nurse. This was January 1928. Living inside a big hospital, being part of its life and wearing its uniform, opened quite a new world for me. Now I had at last done what I wanted, and I seemed at once cut off from the life of our home and our street. At home the family doubted my chances, and said I was suffering with a swollen head if I thought I could go through with it—and I thought so myself—but I worked hard at the hospital and kept very quiet. The work was tiring, but I found it interesting and made good progress, particularly on the practical side. In the qualifying examinations at the end of the year I managed to come out top.

I got on very well. I only missed getting a medal by four marks for being half an hour late—and I’ll tell you what made me late. We didn’t have buses or taxis in those days—it was trams from Hackney down to Seven Sisters Road and down to Amhurst Road. I was playing tennis that morning in the grounds of the hospital at Homerton, and the sister passed by and I was representing the nurses, being the one picked out to compete with other nurses at the hospital. She saw me and said, ‘Nurse Phelps, don’t you be late!’

And I said, ‘I won’t, Sister.’

I was enjoying my game of tennis—but when I went I didn’t realise that buses didn’t run and it was just trams, and I was a bit late and I started to run. I never ran so much in my whole life as I did then but I arrived half an hour late—and when I went in I was sweating because I’d run all the way. The matron used to say I was a good runner, and I got to the hospital and found the room. The sister was sitting there, supervising the nurses, and she pointed to the first chair, so I went in—boiling—and sat down. She never even came and gave me a drink of water. I started reading, and the first words I caught were ‘oculogyral spasms’, which I knew about, and I was writing and I went all through that paper, and I was bang on time. It was over and the bell went to stop, and, instead of going to the top, she came to me first to collect my paper. I was just on the last sentence, and she wouldn’t let me finish—she was really a nasty bit of work—because I could have completed that last one. I knew about oculogyral spasms. But she took it away and so I lost out on the medal by four marks, for being half an hour late. I got higher marks than the medallist in the practical and oral—but I still didn’t get the medal.

For nearly five years I worked as staff nurse at different hospitals, but I was never altogether content because, after a while, hospital routine didn’t satisfy me. It was the social conditions attached to nursing that got me down. In my early years, a nurse’s pay was ridiculously small and the hours terribly long, and worst of all was the snobbish and hypocritical discipline, which I thought an insult to any intelligent woman. It was just exploitation. Nurses were often spoken to by members of the senior staff in a tone no factory girl would have put up with. What irritated me most of all was that, on duty, a nurse was supposed to be a woman with enough brains to carry responsibility, but off duty we were treated like children. We were given hardly any free time and made to keep absurd rules, particularly about seeing men friends, and all because of the Victorian tradition that nursing wasn’t work—it was a noble sacrifice—so we could dispense with decent hours and pay.

I finished my hospital training—I came top in the hospital—then I went on to apply to voluntary hospitals. I applied to one of the best hospitals in London but I hadn’t had the secondary education for it. It didn’t matter what my hospital experience was, even though I nearly always came out top. Eventually I applied to Charing Cross, and they did take me. I asked to have a talk with the matron before the interview. She was a motherly sort, and I was candid with her. She said she could quite understand how I felt—and she said she would give me a chance. ‘You can go to the hospital training school and see how you go—but if you’re no good, you’ll have to leave.’ And that was it. I went to Charing Cross for my training, which was a wonderful experience, and that was the beginning.

I was getting on well, but then I became very, very ill and my mother was called. I’d been to see a friend in Brentwood and was coming home late—you had to get in by twelve o’clock at the nurses’ home from your day off. I realised it was late and I was going to miss my bus to take me to Hackney, and I ran when I saw the bus coming. It slowed down and then went on again, and I ran after it, and, as I ran, I missed it and slipped. I had a big gash on my leg. Nobody had seen me fall, and I knew it was my own fault. Then a motorist came along and said he’d take me to the hospital, but I said ‘no’—with my nurse’s discipline, I was afraid not to get back in time—so he said he’d take me to the house where I could get something to clean my leg and put some iodine and a bandage on it. He took me as far as Hackney and I met one of my night nurses and I explained to her. She said, ‘Come on, Phelps,’—they always called you by your surname—‘that needs proper dressing and stitches.’ The night sister came along, bound my leg, ticked me off and put me in the sickbay.

I didn’t think much of the injury, but after a while my temperature went up, and I thought my neck and face felt queer. When the doctor came, I told him I felt a queer stiffness at the back of my neck. He asked me if I was sickening for mumps, but when I told him I’d had mumps he left it at that. But that night the stiff pain got worse—at times I felt as if the muscles of my face were being pulled out of their sockets—and I couldn’t breathe. Early in the morning I had some kind of convulsion. Another nurse who had served during the war was also in the sick ward. Immediately she saw my condition she ran to the telephone, calling the night nurse, ‘My God, the girl’s got tetanus! I saw it during the war and you can never forget it!’

The night nurse came just as I had a second convulsion. The doctor came rushing in and there was a lot of telephoning for serum. Suddenly they were charging around like mad, sending to the lab to get tetanus antitoxin. They even sent an ambulance to collect it. There was talk of desensitising me, and I was given chloroform and morphine to ease the convulsions, but all the time I was conscious and in worse pain than I had ever imagined possible. While I was given a spinal serum injection, I had such a convulsion that my hands and feet felt as if they were being torn off.

I suppose this should have been the end of me, because the survival rate for tetanus, if not treated in time, is pretty small. For a week I was critically ill, but I don’t remember much about it. My mother was called and the matron said, ‘You don’t know what tetanus is, do you? Well, it’s lockjaw’, and the next thing [my mother] knew she was being given some brandy. I was very ill, but they got to me in time. Tetanus was very rampant in those days.

I returned from convalescing and told the matron that hospital routine had become empty for me. She was sympathetic and suggested I take a whole year’s rest from nursing. She also knew of my home circumstances and that we had no money, and thought I shouldn’t return home but look for other work. I didn’t know how to set about it, but when staying with my elder sister Violet, long since married, I was lucky enough to meet Mr Turner again. He thought I should try to study and suggested I apply for a bursary at Hillcroft College for Women in Surbiton.

I found the principal there sympathetic and understanding and I told her how I felt something was lacking in my present life, and how I knew nothing about social conditions, and above all how I had great difficulties in expressing myself—which I wished to get over. She listened very patiently. I hadn’t much hope, but not long afterwards I had a letter saying that, while no regular bursary was available, an unforeseen vacancy meant they could offer me a place, and with a second bursary from the Middlesex County Council I would be provided for.

They were well equipped for adult education, university and degrees. One tutor was Miss Street—who was very strong—she’d put the fear of God into you if you so much as looked at her. Then there was Miss Ashby, the Principal of Hillcroft College, a loveable, kindly, intellectual person, very gentle. Then Elsie Smith, who was a philosopher. They also took an interest and encouraged me, and they helped and influenced me a lot.

Miss Ashby took a special interest in me. She always called me ‘Penelope’, which wasn’t my name—it was Ada Louise—but it stuck. Elsie Smith also took an interest in me. Hillcroft was a traumatic experience, a place apart where I never knew what was going on in the outside world. In a way I just didn’t know how I was going to adapt myself, but I became great pals with Miss Ashby and her brother, Sir Arthur Ashby. He used to supply me with reading matter that I would never have got elsewhere.

That was 1934. I studied at Hillcroft College for one year, taking courses in English, economics, psychology and history. It was hard work for me but, in between spells of feeling very disheartened, I learnt a lot. At last I was also growing up, shaking off my exaggerated religious views and realising how much I had missed. I made a lot of new friends there, and two of my best friends were Jewish girls. This was one of the things that opened my eyes. As kids in Tottenham we jeered and laughed at Jews, even though we hardly saw any. People were always grumbling about the Jews—they had all the money, they were awful people. I couldn’t imagine having a Jew as a friend. Now I saw how wicked these prejudices were. I was beginning to think for myself, and this made me unsure, because there was so much to know. So much wrong with the world and so much confusion—I didn’t know where to start. At holiday time, I never knew where to go—if I went home it was to a house full of boys so I wasn’t sure what to do at the end of term-time. Miss Ashby said, ‘I have a friend I was at university with—Heron. I’m very fond of her and her husband and children. You’d love it if you went and helped her a bit, because she’s rather overwhelmed in her work, as well as her housework.’ So I went and helped her with the children. I got very attached to Hannah, Patrick [the future painter Patrick Heron], and there was another one who was a Jesuit, very monastic. Then there was Giles, who ran a wonderful farm. I was accepted into the family and they had a great influence on me. Mr Heron had these beautiful shops in London—dressmaking shops—and the family and I became great friends. I even went to Italy with them many years later. They educated me, really. Patrick Heron—I knew all his paintings. Meeting them was a wonderful experience.

Late in 1936, after I left the Herons, I found temporary work in Hertfordshire as a nurse—but I had no security or commitment there. I was friendly with a night nurse and one evening she asked me, ‘Phelps, are you off duty tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Would you like to come and help us with the hunger marchers?’

‘Who are the hunger marchers?’

‘Don’t you know? You’re a bit green, aren’t you? The hunger marchers from Wales.’ I think her father was a Labour MP or in politics anyway—and she was very ‘red’.

I asked her what she wanted me to do, and she said, ‘Just some of your skills looking after their feet, and helping to collect food to feed them because they’re walking all the way from Wales.’

I said, ‘OK, I’ll come when I get off duty tonight.’

So I started trying to beg, borrow or steal for the hunger marchers—and it worked very well. Three of us ran round this little town and we got the men a hall, and the local Co-op helped us, particularly with food—and so did a number of local shopkeepers. They were surprisingly sympathetic and generous. We obtained free medical supplies; the Women’s Guild, a local doctor and clergyman all agreed to help in any way they could.

The marchers, when they turned up, were the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire contingents—about two hundred strong. I never saw such feet in all my life. Shocking. One man’s feet were raw, so I took him through the back door to the most fashionable chiropodist in the town, who at once agreed to treat him for nothing. Another man—you just couldn’t imagine it, his feet were so bad. I knew it was a hospital job, so I rang our ambulance and got the man taken to the hospital. I got hauled over the coals! Who called the ambulance? The porters who drove the ambulance knew me. I had to tell them my name, for them to take this man to casualty, where he was admitted. The matron called me in the morning. She said, ‘Nurse Phelps, we don’t employ nurses who are “red”.’

I said, ‘I’m not “red”, Matron. I have no politics. I just thought it was the humanitarian thing to do. He needed help and he was a sick man.’

She said, ‘You can’t do that here—not in this hospital. There are people here, nurses, whose parents wouldn’t approve of what you were doing—because I assume you are very communistic.’

I said, ‘Not at all, I don’t belong to any communist party. But if that’s the way you feel, Matron, if you think I’m going to infiltrate the nurses, I’ve got no contract with you, so I’ll go. Thank you, Matron.’ And I walked out.

I think she was a bit flabbergasted. I told one of the girls about it and she said, ‘Good. If you leave, would you volunteer for Spain?’

I said I knew nothing about Spain—I didn’t know anything.

She said I wanted educating, so she told me all about Spain—how the nuns were taking Franco’s side, and, of course, it grabbed my heart—I was young and very emotional. She told me, ‘You go to London, go to Tottenham Court Road, and you’ll see the people—the Spanish Medical Aid. Talk to them.’

So that was that, and that was when I first met my boss, I always remember him—Goryan. I think he must have been Yugoslav or similar—I never knew, but you never worried what nationality or political party people belonged to. Goryan was very good. He asked me all about my nursing—did I know anything about theatre work? We used to get amputations in ‘surgical’ from accidents, being in central London—so we had lots of accidents. I’d had wonderful theatre experience at Charing Cross, so I said, ‘Yes, I know a lot about theatre work, I worked at…’ But that was enough.

‘Well, you’re going somewhere where you’ll be very, very busy.’

Despite my theatre experience, the Spanish Medical Aid people still wanted me to do a radiology training course. ‘No, surgery is my calling, that’s what I’m good at because I worked in theatre.’ That seemed to suit them, so they handed me my ticket, and I was off.

On 6 January 1937 I left England as one of a party of four English nurses to report for duty with the Spanish Medical Aid Committee in Barcelona. Setting out was exciting enough for me because I had never been abroad before—not even set foot on board ship.

We went to France, were put up overnight and mooched around the next day—we wasted practically two days in France—but we had to get paperwork filled in. Then we boarded a train for Spain. It was a terrible, terrible journey into Spain to Port-Bou—which was a horrible place.

We arrived at the frontier at one o’clock, and we had our first experience of the war. The carriage next to ours in the train that was to take us to Barcelona was badly smashed and battered, and, while we waited, we saw our first aerial bombardment. It was far out to sea—the ships and planes were almost out of sight, the sound of the guns was faint—but the Spaniards were very excited, running about and pointing, with shouts of ‘Aviones! Aviones!’—all for very little, it seemed to me. While waiting, we sat in the sun outside a little open-air restaurant, where we had a meal of meat, rice, olives, fruit and coffee.

When the train at last arrived it had funny open carriages with wooden benches, and we didn’t have much room for ourselves and our luggage. It was mostly full of soldiers, and at each station on the line the train stopped and more Spanish soldiers got in, with much shouting and waving of handkerchiefs, while peasants and girls along the platform handed out armfuls of oranges to anyone who wanted them.

We were altogether three days in Barcelona. In the shops, food didn’t seem very plentiful, but I thought clothes were cheap, and our taxi was certainly the cheapest we had ever been in. There were hardly any signs of war, but still, as compared to other towns I had known, there was an air of tension about.

We made our way to the station with all our luggage—probably no one had ever gone to Spain as well equipped as we were. We had sleeping bags, leather leggings, boiler suits, blankets, nurses’ overalls, gas masks and various utensils. But, oh dear, when we got to the station! Inexperienced as we were, we didn’t yet know that this was wartime, and that people might already have been waiting the whole day to make sure of getting a place. The train was crammed full, with soldiers occupying every inch of the corridors, and one glance showed there wasn’t an earthly hope of getting all our luggage in. Our temporary organiser, who didn’t strike me as likely to organise anything, was in despair. He said it would be absurd to think we needed so much luggage, and he made us leave behind—of all things—our leggings, boiler suits, sleeping bags and blankets…in fact all the things we would later miss bitterly. He promised to send them after us, but of course we never saw any of it again.

In Valencia we had to change trains, and the train to Albacete was even fuller than the coastal train. As we drew away from the coast, it got colder. We stopped at all kinds of little stations, where crowds of villagers brought offerings of fruit for the soldiers—mostly oranges. I’ve never seen so much fruit in my life.

We pushed on to Albacete, where, after a long, cold wait, a guard came and took us halfway across the town to a place where an official in a badly lit office said a few words in English to us. From there we were taken to a hospital and put into an empty and freezing-cold ward, where we tried to wrap ourselves into blankets and get a little sleep. The smell of the latrines was terrific, everything was filthy and dirty and we were next door to the lavatories. I never slept that night. There was not just one in a bed—there were two or three—and sometimes you found yourself moving around; well, it was so full of people, and you’d say ‘move over—make room, I’m tired’, and you’d find yourself sleeping among a whole load of men. It was amazing to me. Gosh, what a terrible place that was! I think everyone knew Albacete. Shocking. We seemed to be stuck there—we couldn’t move until our papers arrived and it wasn’t just a couple of hours; you could hang around for days. You used to get vouchers for this and vouchers for that.