Miscellaneous Information

My Life by Lionel Graves. (Page 23)

I reported to the C.O. Who passed me on to the R.S.M. Who passed me on to another sergeant who showed me to a room in a unused ward which was a so called padded cell, a room but without pads, for violent patients. Then I met the woman Red Cross officer who was in charge of diversional therapy and who was to be my immediate boss. Later I went round the ward meeting staff and patients and tried to pick up the different activities, leather work, string belt making, etc, etc. of which I had not a clue or any aptitude for. Had my leg pulled by friendly staff, who showed me a poor Lascar merchant seaman who knew no English and could only shake with quivering hands, they asked me what I was going to give him to do. I sensed what they were after so I just gave him some bits of wool to sort – it was like a snowstorm – however it helped to break the ice.

After a week or two of getting nowhere fast, I got very depressed one night and couldn't sleep and could see no hope for the future. I reached the very pit of despair and I prayed like I had never prayed before. The next morning another RAMC sergeant said, “Come on, move your kit, you can share my room there's room for another bed”.

Although I was not any better at the therapy things were better from then on. I was accepted as one of the regular staff, being a small hospital they were a close knit community. I got friendly with a sergeant patient who had been in charge of his unit's armoury, he was as sane as I was, though that might not be saying much. He was in for shooting at his RSM (regimental sergeant major) with a Bren gun. He told me the RSM had been riding and niggling at him and when I said goodbye as he was being posted back to the same regiment he said, “If the b****** does the same again, I wont miss him next time!”

As I did not see him again I presumed he was OK. Another patient, a German officer P.O.W. With a most aristocratic bearing, thought he was Kaiser Ludwig Wilhelm XI, I always felt like bowing when I went to see him and dole out needles and thread willy nilly for him to do the most beautiful tapestry you had ever seen and make marvelous fire screens. I was hoping to get one for myself but the officers and psychiatrists had got in first and there was a long waiting list. I looked at his medical notes after a week or so and saw that he had already tried to kill himself and here was I giving him needles.

Sometimes when visiting the ward in the evening to see patients the lights failed and the only light was a lantern in the orderly room at the end of the ward. The howling and sobbing from the patients in the darkened wards was really eerie and I used to stay in the orderly room with the NCO in charge till the power was back on, Several times I was invited to see a patient get the electric shock treatment, which I suspected was another test so I politely declined the kind offer.

Every so often I used to do guard duties as NOSM or night orderly sergeant major in charge of about twenty Basuto soldiers who provided the guard. I spent most of the night in the guard room but periodically went on rounds around the perimeter barbed wire fence which was brilliantly lit to see if the guards were on the job, then fill in the report book. One night the camp shoemaker came back later and tried to get onto the camp at the main gate and argued with the guards, they shot him! Luckily I was not NOSM that night.

Then they decided to hold another course at Mt. Carmel, this time collecting people from different regiments and training them in Diversional or Occupational therapy and everyone was a sergeant. I made some more very good friends there, three of us used to send a regular request to the Forces Radio station, a hundred yards up the hill from us. We never had one played but always got a mention with the also-rans and an apology to Joe (me), Duke (Lawrence Winfield) and Wally, (Walter ?)

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