Description
Mrs. MacDairmid describes the setup of wards within the flying stations and how medical care was provided to the amputee patients returning from overseas.
Rea MacDairmid
Mrs. Rea MacDairmid was born in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan on April 29, 1922. Her father served in WWI and brother in WWII. After graduating from high school in Saskatchewan, Rea went to Regina to enlist in the Air Force. In June 1942 she received her first posting and was stationed in Paulsen, Manitoba. Within her In-Canada service she was posted to Davidson, Saskatchewan, and Lethbridge, Alberta, later transferring to Winnipeg where she became a Hospital Assistant at Deer Lodge Hospital. This was Rea’s longest posting of 2 ½ years. In October 1945, she decided to get married and, therefore, discharged from the Air Force. Mrs. MacDairmid chose not to work while raising her family. Her love for service time in the Air Force will never be forgotten.
Transcript
On a flying station it was a little different, but it was bed care and, and the medications were handled by the nursing sisters, but it was bed care and treatments. There were four wards in, that the Air Force hospital assistants worked on and KL, M&M wards and the ward was forty-eight beds and they were all amputees, and their treatments were constant, very antiquated methods of, of getting the, the compresses ready for them.In a tiny closet, a very tiny closet, you had a., a one burner hot plate, with a basin on it, water on it, and it had a peace of canvas with two dowels on the side and you dropped the towel into that and went it boiled up you twisted the towel, dumped the towel onto a fresh towel and ran with it to the patient and then, when that cooled off you were already doing the second or third one and you, by the time you got through forty-eight of them, there was a, you were ready to start the second treatment for the day so. But it was a constant ongoing thing as far as the amputees were concerned, but you had lots of jokes with them and no one, you didn’t hear a complaint from any of them it was just, it was really remarkable when you know what they went through, but you’d see tears, but then they would talk to somebody else down the row and they were just... most admiral men that I’ve ever run across. They just cared so much for one another.