Growing Up

Passchendaele Poopy Pin
Photo: Royal British Legion

I'm not given to impulse buying.  In fact, I probably think twice - or twenty times - about most things before deciding to live with the status quo.  On Monday, however, I ordered a Passchendaele Poppy Pin.  These have been manufactured in a limited edition of 60,083 ... one for each British soldier who died during the battle that lasted from 31st July to 10th November 1917.  The brass from which they are made has come from shell fuses collected on the battlefield, and the green and red enamel has been mixed with soil from there too.

Now that it has arrived - with amazing efficiency and speed! - I find myself wondering about those young men commemorated, many of whom would have been in their late teens or early twenties, and I have tried to think what might have been important in my life at that age.  Work would have been very prominent: was my job going to last? would a day-by-day job turn into a profitable and useful career?  Also high on the list would have been girls, dreams of getting married, starting a family; in those days that was really the only way a young man would leave home, unless going to university or joining the armed forces.

With my mind thus tuned to teenage, I recalled what was probably the first time I ever spent a night away from my family home.  I was fifteen or sixteen, and had been admitted to hospital for a minor operation.  It would almost certainly have been dealt with today on a 'day-surgery' basis, but in the '60s it meant being admitted on Monday and finally discharged, and brought home by a kindly neighbour possessed of a motor car, on Sunday morning.  The operation was carried out on Tuesday and, since it didn't impair my mobility, I was quickly wandering about the ward, or spending time in the day room chatting to the only other young man there.  I was considered too old for the children's ward, and most of the other men around me were so old as to be no company for a teenager.

As my memory of that week came back to me, I recalled one particular nurse named Mary.  Only a few years older than me, I suppose she was more empathetic than some of her colleagues; seeing me clearly bored, she suggested that I come and help her.  It would never be allowed now, of course, but I was quickly taught how to fold 'hospital corners' and helped her make all the beds.  It's a skill that has never left me, even though I'd not used it for many years until recently.  This all took place during the long summer holiday and after my discharge I had time for more adventures before returning to school.  One day I took my cycle on the train to Norwich, found where Mary lived and took a photograph of her!

Yesterday, I surprised myself by the power of modern computer software.  In half an hour, I was able to discover the names of Mary's parents, when they were married, the fact that Mary was a twin, when she was married, the names and ages of their two sons, and the address at which, for at least ten years, the family was living in the suburbs of that 'Fine City'!  I found the house on Google, and - amazingly - there were people outside, one of whom could well have been this lady!

It would be completely out of order to make contact with her after all these years but - if she remembers me at all out of the hundreds of patients she must have looked after - I wonder how she would react to the thought that a skill she passed on over fifty years ago is still in use today!