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Part 9: Working on Seaview Ward.
Seaview Ward was just below the flight Deck & it had full glass windows around the curved stern bulkhead, hence the name ? Seaview. Well the first thing we did was cover all the windows up, to prevent any injuries from flying glass if we were attacked so No View ward would have been more accurate.
When the Narwhale prisoners/patients were discharged via the small ships to Montevideo, I was released from that duty & went to work on Seaview. It had been designated as Orthopaedics but held a miss match of those not needing Intensive Care, or severe burns treatments but weren?t minor enough to go down to the low dependency wards below decks.
I suppose we had the usual broken leg or two but of course what sticks in your mind are the more dramatic cases & these were mainly amputations. I had come across a few in the naval hospitals but it?s usually the elderly diabetics or smokers & occasional industrial accident. I don?t think I?d ever done a stump dressing before although it was covered in First Aid lessons.
To suddenly walk into the ward full & up & running as it was when I arrived was quite a shock even though Sindy had been telling me how bad things were. The sight of so many limbless young men was as horrific as those that can be seen at Selly Oak in Birmingham today. The cause of ours, were the result of mines, shells & machine guns, today?s are mostly IED?s.
The wounds healed remarkably quickly & there was very little infection. Psychologically of course recovery was going to take some a lot longer than others. I have never really worried about losing a leg as I could lead my life with an artificial limb, you can even get an offshore medical with one these days. I always had a fear of losing a hand, something we still have no effective substitute for. We had two guys who lost an arm.
The little plastic mines the Argentines deliberately sprinkled about, without making maps, caused many injuries (the best idea afterwards was to get the Argentines to look for & clear the mines they laid ? surely against the Geneva convention though?) We would receive a casualty who had part of his foot blown off by those little mines, we would dress it & he?d think, well that doesn?t look too bad. A little later the surgeon would drop by & explain that because there weren?t any prosthesis for half a foot, they were going to take the rest of his foot off. Some were taken off below the knee, as it was thought this would be more practical, much easier for prosthetic limbs. It?s a hell of a thing to come to terms with, the Argies took half your foot but the mob took half your leg!
Gas gangrene was always a threat due to soil contamination of wounds (apparently it?s a higher risk in areas used by horses, like the Camp) & I believe it was the reason for at least one amputations. Like burns, with gangrene it?s always the smell you remember the most. My father was a butcher & once received a large gammon sealed in plastic via an un-chilled delivery. When I pierced the plastic on a nice warm summer?s day, the sickly sweet stench was wrenching, it was a smell I was to recognise in these cases.
Some surgeons seemed very keen to amputate limbs, where there was viable blood supply but the bone was smashed & it looked like it wouldn?t heal. Their theory was that they were going to lose it eventually so best get it over with & spend the time coming to terms with it now in our safe environment, with other guys going through the same thing. I tried to persuade a couple to be patient; the services give you up to 18months before kicking you out if you?re not going to be fit for duty again. A lot could happen in that time, different opinions & improvements in orthopaedics. Most of these guys didn?t even have one uninjured leg; the other would have had some damage as well, so I only saw a few get to the stage of trying crutches onboard before being repatriated.
So as you can imagine, the mood of this ward could swing up & down & generally evolved around the drug rounds. In the field this guys had two morphine ampoules tried around their neck. If someone was injured you administered their morphine to them, it was an accepted rule that you wouldn?t use your own. So instant relief in the field, on the ship, they had to wait for the Sisters to come around with the drug trolley. There were many of the Sisters who were convinced that by giving these guys Omnopon (less addictive derivative of morphine) when they asked for it i.e. when in pain, they would end up hopelessly addicted as happened to some Vietnam vets. This has been disproved, as long as just enough morphine is given to kill the pain, addiction doesn?t occur. So after a week or so of morphine, they were on Paracetamol two four times a day, I kid you not! We had nothing in-between. Eventually we accepted some medium strength analgesia from the Argentine Hospital ship, after visiting to take off some of their casualties, they noted how short of supplies we were. On one occasion I gave two aspirin to a guy in distress, to tie him over as the drug round was still an hour away & was nearly put on a charge because it hadn?t been written up on his drug chart & signed by a doctor. Some Sisters just shouldn?t have been out of their hospital environment.
We had a couple of very vocal Para?s who lay in bed bitching about everyone & everything. One of them I particularly disliked after he first threatened an Argentine conscript & said he was going to get him one night & cut his throat. I had to reassure the conscript this Para couldn?t get out of bed if he wanted too with his injuries & pointed out to the Para that the conscript was mobile & if scared enough might decide to attack was the best form of defence! I was in the habit of asking a Ghurkha in bed next to this Para if he needed pain relief. He would never ask for it as it was seen as a sign of weakness, he would just look at me & I would give him the jab. When the Sister asked, did he say he needed it? I would say, he?s been shot six times, of course he said he needed it.
This poor unfortunate was practically suicidal. He felt he had left down his regiment & the Queen by being injured before the battle & being medivaced firstly to the Red & Green Life Machine, where they had to operate immediately to save his life & then transferred to us. I was there when he arrived & an escort told us his story. He had been preparing to yomp & do battle, to earn his spurs as it were, when a Sergeant of the Signals regiment was supposedly cleaning his SMG & managed to loose off half a dozen rounds into the Ghurkha, hitting his back & leg. How this could have happened I can not imagine as you have to remove the mag to clear the weapon; whether there was something more to it we never knew but the sergeant was sent back to the UK for his own protection, presumably to a board of inquiry & courts martial.
Friendly fire incidents are always shocking & tragic, as this one was. I often wondered what happened to him & how he survived afterwards. Hopefully he would have got some compensation from the Falklands fund, as I would be surprised if he was able to continue his service & therefore wouldn?t have got his pension that would have supported him, & his whole family. So I am asking the Ghurkha if he wanted his pain meds & the same Para pipes up, ?he don?t F know anything about F pain, I know about F pain, ask me?.
This Para went on to run a service charity & has been duly honoured for his work over the last 30yrs & has helped many come to terms with their injuries. He obviously came to terms with his badly injured legs & still uses crutches today. We saw people at their worst & some at their best. You can see this on a normal nursing ward in the UK, every day of the week but the more extreme circumstances, the more extreme the responses tend to be. And one things for sure you never know how you?d be reacting in their place. You have good days & bad days & someone might just meet you on the bad days & make a judgement about you based on that experience, the next day you might have been helping out someone worse off & sharing their load.
Although we were short of medium analgesia, the one comfort the Para?s & Marines both needed was their berets. When a child goes to theatre, a nurse will place a teddy on their trolley as they go down to reassure them & perhaps distract them. A 15 stone bootneck asks for his beret; the Green Beret that he sweat & bled for, so long & so hard at Lympstone. The beret of the brotherhood of the Royal Marines; the brothers he was willing to die for & the brothers who gathered him up & carried him safely back. Although I never desired the Green Beret, once you get to know some of them in such a situation, then you have to respect them & what their beret symbolises.
So having learnt this little trick we tried it out with the Argentine wounded. It didn?t work with the conscripts, I guess because their uniform meant virtual imprisonment to them & they hadn?t earnt it in the same way but had it thrust upon them. The Argentine special forces however, did appreciate the touch & one had a Green Beret, if a little lurid for Anglo Saxon tastes. He spoke no English & was very tense as we prepared to take him away. I took his beret from his bag & slipped it under his pillow. He smiled & went off at least appearing to be a braver man.
On reading the memories of our patients, I had to smile when one of them mentioned seeing the Life of Brian in the cinema onboard & how it had cheered him up & how the catch phrases from the film had been going on in his head for the remainder of his stay onboard.
I had seen this film onboard too. I hadn?t seen it before & in fact had avoided it as I didn?t think I would appreciate it after reading the reviews. I thought it would be too close to the religious bone for me. However there was no other entertainment & we all sat there & watched it & the tears of laughter started to roll. I don?t think if I had seen this in Gosport before sailing I would have appreciated it, although I do enjoy JC & the other Pythons. But in this situation, in this absurdity; Python seemed to be the saner world.
Next morning I am delivery a wash bowl to a Para & singing down the ward, ?Always look on the bright side of life?? a little flat perhaps but with gusto. The Bootnecks just watched me without particular comment; just another mad ?Doc? but for some reason it really wound the Para?s up. Then I tripped accidently at the foot of a bed & spilled the whole bowl of warm water onto the occupant. There was a moment of silence & then house came down! I tried to apologise but he wasn?t having it. Luckily (or not) it wasn?t the Para mentioned above, as no one would have believed that it had been an accident. I threw him his towel, looked into his contorted tomato face & said, ?Crucifixion? Crucifixion is too good for the likes of you? and scarpered.
Seaview Ward was just below the flight Deck & it had full glass windows around the curved stern bulkhead, hence the name ? Seaview. Well the first thing we did was cover all the windows up, to prevent any injuries from flying glass if we were attacked so No View ward would have been more accurate.
When the Narwhale prisoners/patients were discharged via the small ships to Montevideo, I was released from that duty & went to work on Seaview. It had been designated as Orthopaedics but held a miss match of those not needing Intensive Care, or severe burns treatments but weren?t minor enough to go down to the low dependency wards below decks.
I suppose we had the usual broken leg or two but of course what sticks in your mind are the more dramatic cases & these were mainly amputations. I had come across a few in the naval hospitals but it?s usually the elderly diabetics or smokers & occasional industrial accident. I don?t think I?d ever done a stump dressing before although it was covered in First Aid lessons.
To suddenly walk into the ward full & up & running as it was when I arrived was quite a shock even though Sindy had been telling me how bad things were. The sight of so many limbless young men was as horrific as those that can be seen at Selly Oak in Birmingham today. The cause of ours, were the result of mines, shells & machine guns, today?s are mostly IED?s.
The wounds healed remarkably quickly & there was very little infection. Psychologically of course recovery was going to take some a lot longer than others. I have never really worried about losing a leg as I could lead my life with an artificial limb, you can even get an offshore medical with one these days. I always had a fear of losing a hand, something we still have no effective substitute for. We had two guys who lost an arm.
The little plastic mines the Argentines deliberately sprinkled about, without making maps, caused many injuries (the best idea afterwards was to get the Argentines to look for & clear the mines they laid ? surely against the Geneva convention though?) We would receive a casualty who had part of his foot blown off by those little mines, we would dress it & he?d think, well that doesn?t look too bad. A little later the surgeon would drop by & explain that because there weren?t any prosthesis for half a foot, they were going to take the rest of his foot off. Some were taken off below the knee, as it was thought this would be more practical, much easier for prosthetic limbs. It?s a hell of a thing to come to terms with, the Argies took half your foot but the mob took half your leg!
Gas gangrene was always a threat due to soil contamination of wounds (apparently it?s a higher risk in areas used by horses, like the Camp) & I believe it was the reason for at least one amputations. Like burns, with gangrene it?s always the smell you remember the most. My father was a butcher & once received a large gammon sealed in plastic via an un-chilled delivery. When I pierced the plastic on a nice warm summer?s day, the sickly sweet stench was wrenching, it was a smell I was to recognise in these cases.
Some surgeons seemed very keen to amputate limbs, where there was viable blood supply but the bone was smashed & it looked like it wouldn?t heal. Their theory was that they were going to lose it eventually so best get it over with & spend the time coming to terms with it now in our safe environment, with other guys going through the same thing. I tried to persuade a couple to be patient; the services give you up to 18months before kicking you out if you?re not going to be fit for duty again. A lot could happen in that time, different opinions & improvements in orthopaedics. Most of these guys didn?t even have one uninjured leg; the other would have had some damage as well, so I only saw a few get to the stage of trying crutches onboard before being repatriated.
So as you can imagine, the mood of this ward could swing up & down & generally evolved around the drug rounds. In the field this guys had two morphine ampoules tried around their neck. If someone was injured you administered their morphine to them, it was an accepted rule that you wouldn?t use your own. So instant relief in the field, on the ship, they had to wait for the Sisters to come around with the drug trolley. There were many of the Sisters who were convinced that by giving these guys Omnopon (less addictive derivative of morphine) when they asked for it i.e. when in pain, they would end up hopelessly addicted as happened to some Vietnam vets. This has been disproved, as long as just enough morphine is given to kill the pain, addiction doesn?t occur. So after a week or so of morphine, they were on Paracetamol two four times a day, I kid you not! We had nothing in-between. Eventually we accepted some medium strength analgesia from the Argentine Hospital ship, after visiting to take off some of their casualties, they noted how short of supplies we were. On one occasion I gave two aspirin to a guy in distress, to tie him over as the drug round was still an hour away & was nearly put on a charge because it hadn?t been written up on his drug chart & signed by a doctor. Some Sisters just shouldn?t have been out of their hospital environment.
We had a couple of very vocal Para?s who lay in bed bitching about everyone & everything. One of them I particularly disliked after he first threatened an Argentine conscript & said he was going to get him one night & cut his throat. I had to reassure the conscript this Para couldn?t get out of bed if he wanted too with his injuries & pointed out to the Para that the conscript was mobile & if scared enough might decide to attack was the best form of defence! I was in the habit of asking a Ghurkha in bed next to this Para if he needed pain relief. He would never ask for it as it was seen as a sign of weakness, he would just look at me & I would give him the jab. When the Sister asked, did he say he needed it? I would say, he?s been shot six times, of course he said he needed it.
This poor unfortunate was practically suicidal. He felt he had left down his regiment & the Queen by being injured before the battle & being medivaced firstly to the Red & Green Life Machine, where they had to operate immediately to save his life & then transferred to us. I was there when he arrived & an escort told us his story. He had been preparing to yomp & do battle, to earn his spurs as it were, when a Sergeant of the Signals regiment was supposedly cleaning his SMG & managed to loose off half a dozen rounds into the Ghurkha, hitting his back & leg. How this could have happened I can not imagine as you have to remove the mag to clear the weapon; whether there was something more to it we never knew but the sergeant was sent back to the UK for his own protection, presumably to a board of inquiry & courts martial.
Friendly fire incidents are always shocking & tragic, as this one was. I often wondered what happened to him & how he survived afterwards. Hopefully he would have got some compensation from the Falklands fund, as I would be surprised if he was able to continue his service & therefore wouldn?t have got his pension that would have supported him, & his whole family. So I am asking the Ghurkha if he wanted his pain meds & the same Para pipes up, ?he don?t F know anything about F pain, I know about F pain, ask me?.
This Para went on to run a service charity & has been duly honoured for his work over the last 30yrs & has helped many come to terms with their injuries. He obviously came to terms with his badly injured legs & still uses crutches today. We saw people at their worst & some at their best. You can see this on a normal nursing ward in the UK, every day of the week but the more extreme circumstances, the more extreme the responses tend to be. And one things for sure you never know how you?d be reacting in their place. You have good days & bad days & someone might just meet you on the bad days & make a judgement about you based on that experience, the next day you might have been helping out someone worse off & sharing their load.
Although we were short of medium analgesia, the one comfort the Para?s & Marines both needed was their berets. When a child goes to theatre, a nurse will place a teddy on their trolley as they go down to reassure them & perhaps distract them. A 15 stone bootneck asks for his beret; the Green Beret that he sweat & bled for, so long & so hard at Lympstone. The beret of the brotherhood of the Royal Marines; the brothers he was willing to die for & the brothers who gathered him up & carried him safely back. Although I never desired the Green Beret, once you get to know some of them in such a situation, then you have to respect them & what their beret symbolises.
So having learnt this little trick we tried it out with the Argentine wounded. It didn?t work with the conscripts, I guess because their uniform meant virtual imprisonment to them & they hadn?t earnt it in the same way but had it thrust upon them. The Argentine special forces however, did appreciate the touch & one had a Green Beret, if a little lurid for Anglo Saxon tastes. He spoke no English & was very tense as we prepared to take him away. I took his beret from his bag & slipped it under his pillow. He smiled & went off at least appearing to be a braver man.
On reading the memories of our patients, I had to smile when one of them mentioned seeing the Life of Brian in the cinema onboard & how it had cheered him up & how the catch phrases from the film had been going on in his head for the remainder of his stay onboard.
I had seen this film onboard too. I hadn?t seen it before & in fact had avoided it as I didn?t think I would appreciate it after reading the reviews. I thought it would be too close to the religious bone for me. However there was no other entertainment & we all sat there & watched it & the tears of laughter started to roll. I don?t think if I had seen this in Gosport before sailing I would have appreciated it, although I do enjoy JC & the other Pythons. But in this situation, in this absurdity; Python seemed to be the saner world.
Next morning I am delivery a wash bowl to a Para & singing down the ward, ?Always look on the bright side of life?? a little flat perhaps but with gusto. The Bootnecks just watched me without particular comment; just another mad ?Doc? but for some reason it really wound the Para?s up. Then I tripped accidently at the foot of a bed & spilled the whole bowl of warm water onto the occupant. There was a moment of silence & then house came down! I tried to apologise but he wasn?t having it. Luckily (or not) it wasn?t the Para mentioned above, as no one would have believed that it had been an accident. I threw him his towel, looked into his contorted tomato face & said, ?Crucifixion? Crucifixion is too good for the likes of you? and scarpered.
for the next episode, should be ready to post tomorrow.
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