Working on the wounded

Heroes Remember

Working on the wounded

Transcript

So it was, but we would have to get them up very early in the morning, four or five in the morning and get them washed and cleaned and get their breakfast because the day nurses, there would be about three of us on, all day long you did dressings. And tried to get the dressings that were stuck from, you know, from the emergency first aid that was done on them and trying to get those dressings off. And then their burns were really severe and it's so painful, to get burn dressings changed. The young men that could help us would help us you know, if they knew that we were trying to do all this and run and get something and... But so many of them had shrapnel in their stomachs or in their backs or and as I mentioned the burns. And some had leg or an arm amputated and so it was, it was pretty overwhelming for a twenty-two, twenty-three year old, to see this and see how, how great they were. At night when you made the rounds, if I could see they weren't sleeping, I'd go and just talk to them. And they'd tell me about their home and about their family or if they had children, or. You know, many of them were very young, they were just you know, maybe had a girlfriend or something and then they missed their, you know a lot of them missed their mother, you know, and their father. But you know, mothers are pretty important to young people.

Description

Ms. Stirling talks about working on the wounded in the hospital. She talks about different wounds. She talks about night time and how the soldiers were home sick.

Jan Stirling

Jan Sterling was born in England, in June of 1927. She moved to Canada where she grew up in New Brunswick living between Saint John and Fredericton. She graduated from Saint John General Hospital in 1949 where she joined the army medial corp in 1949 to help out in the Korean War. She tells us what it was like to be a nursing sister in the hospital in Korea during the war.

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