62. Nurse finds love at Joyce Green Hospital

Key words/phrases : Dartford Hospital’s Nurses’ League, St. Vincent’s Community Centre, Temple Hill, Benjamin Disraeli, Robert Browning, Tom and Peggy Priestman (née Staples), St Mary’s Church Putney, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, hookworm and malaria.

No. 62

So how was the annual general meeting and yearly get-together of the Dartford Hospital’s Nurses’ League when a substantial number of members met recently at St. Vincent’s Community Centre, Temple Hill ?

I would have loved to have been there, to have met old friends and ex-colleagues and to have joined in with some of the conversations in which so many happy memories and reminiscences were undoubtedly shared.

This type of reunion tends to be characterised by fairly fit, happy and excited people enthusiastically involved in swapping stories connected with the past and talking about things that have happened to them and their loved ones during the previous months.

I think that it was Benjamin Disraeli who referred to “that special magic in the memory of long established friendships that softens the heart and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart” and Robert Browning who once asked “What joy is better than news of friends ?”

The other day however I was reading an account of the post-war reunion of nurse Peggy Priestman (née Staples) and her soldier husband Tom and it reminded me of the sheer relief and emotional release that occurs during some reunions.

Peggy was a 21 year old nurse at Joyce Green Hospital when she fell in love with Tom Priestman, a patient with tonsillitis who was being cared for on her ward. It was 1941 and parts of England were being pounded nightly by the German Air Force who were determined to bring Britain into subjection. Tom and Peggy used to slip out of their ward whenever they could and much of their courting took place under the night skies blanketing Joyce Green whilst London and parts of South East England were being pummelled during the Blitz.

Was Tom fit enough to be courting Peggy behind one of the wards at Joyce Green ? Well it seems that he was because although he was an in-patient for over three months this was actually a ploy on the part of the medical staff to protect him by rendering him “unfit for conscription”.

These two love birds were married in July 1941 at St Mary’s Church, Putney and a few weeks later Tom was shipped out to the Far East with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.

Sadly, as was the case with so many couples, this was the beginning of a long and hard separation. Tom eventually arrived in Java only having managed to send Peggy a note and pair of silk stockings from South Africa whilst en route, after which all news of him dried up.

Peggy wrote regularly to Tom in Java but all her letters came back marked “return to sender”. She became anxious and desperate for news and then one day, about three months later, a card arrived in the post bearing the following message: “Dear Peggy, Am a prisoner, not wounded, safe & well. My thoughts are always with you and those at home. Love Tom”. He had been taken prisoner by the Japanese.

Peggy of course was elated. Her husband was alive and so now she could carry on waiting for their eventual reunion. She heard nothing from Tom for about a year until another card arrived bearing the briefest of information but she was comforted again by the fact that at least he was alive. Comforted that was until she heard about the conditions under which prisoners-of-war were being kept. Brutal guards, starvation rations, slave labour and the ever present likelihood of succumbing to disease. Prisoners were said to be dropping like flies.

Peggy received two further cards before Tom returned home in October 1945, one of which told her that his PoW camp had been liberated by Australian Forces and said “Be patient, I’ll be home eventually”.

And the end of the story ? Peggy was staying at his parents’ house in Cumbria, and was due to travel to Liverpool the next day to meet her husband. But instead she was awakened by a midnight knock at their door. Tom had arrived early and made his own way to Whitehaven.

What a reunion that must have been although Tom was in a terrible state both physically and mentally. He was grossly emaciated, riddled with hookworm, plagued with malaria and was suffering from diarrhoea. He was hospitalised on several occasions during his first post-demob year during which time Peggy described him as a “depressed zombie”. Nine months later Peggy gave birth to a baby girl, something that she believed to have been the turning point on their journey back to normality.

Who was it who once said: “In loneliness, in sickness, in confusion, the mere knowledge of friendship makes it possible to endure suffering, even where the friend is powerless to help. It is enough that the friend exists. Friendship is not diminished by distance or time, by imprisonment or war, by suffering or silence. It is in these things that it roots itself most deeply. It is from these things that it flowers”.