laughed at Jews, even though we hardly saw any. People were always grumbling about the Jews—they had all the money, they were awful people. I couldn’t imagine having a Jew as a friend. Now I saw how wicked these prejudices were. I was beginning to think for myself, and this made me unsure, because there was so much to know. So much wrong with the world and so much confusion—I didn’t know where to start. At holiday time, I never knew where to go—if I went home it was to a house full of boys so I wasn’t sure what to do at the end of term-time. Miss Ashby said, ‘I have a friend I was at university with—Heron. I’m very fond of her and her husband and children. You’d love it if you went and helped her a bit, because she’s rather overwhelmed in her work, as well as her housework.’ So I went and helped her with the children. I got very attached to Hannah, Patrick [the future painter Patrick Heron], and there was another one who was a Jesuit, very monastic. Then there was Giles, who ran a wonderful farm. I was accepted into the family and they had a great influence on me. Mr Heron had these beautiful shops in London—dressmaking shops—and the family and I became great friends. I even went to Italy with them many years later. They educated me, really. Patrick Heron—I knew all his paintings. Meeting them was a wonderful experience.
Late in 1936, after I left the Herons, I found temporary work in Hertfordshire as a nurse—but I had no security or commitment there. I was friendly with a night nurse and one evening she asked me, ‘Phelps, are you off duty tomorrow?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Would you like to come and help us with the hunger marchers?’
‘Who are the hunger marchers?’
‘Don’t you know? You’re a bit green, aren’t you? The hunger marchers from Wales.’ I think her father was a Labour MP or in politics anyway—and she was very ‘red’.
I asked her what she wanted me to do, and she said, ‘Just some of your skills looking after their feet, and helping to collect food to feed them because they’re walking all the way from Wales.’
I said, ‘OK, I’ll come when I get off duty tonight.’
So I started trying to beg, borrow or steal for the hunger marchers—and it worked very well. Three of us ran round this little town and we got the men a hall, and the local Co-op helped us, particularly with food—and so did a number of local shopkeepers. They were surprisingly sympathetic and generous. We obtained free medical supplies; the Women’s Guild, a local doctor and clergyman all agreed to help in any way they could.
The marchers, when they turned up, were the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire contingents—about two hundred strong. I never saw such feet in all my life. Shocking. One man’s feet were raw, so I took him through the back door to the most fashionable chiropodist in the town, who at once agreed to treat him for nothing. Another man—you just couldn’t imagine it, his feet were so bad. I knew it was a hospital job, so I rang our ambulance and got the man taken to the hospital. I got hauled over the coals! Who called the ambulance? The porters who drove the ambulance knew me. I had to tell them my name, for them to take this man to casualty, where he was admitted. The matron called me in the morning. She said, ‘Nurse Phelps, we don’t employ nurses who are “red”.’
I said, ‘I’m not “red”, Matron. I have no politics. I just thought it was the humanitarian thing to do. He needed help and he was a sick man.’
She said, ‘You can’t do that here—not in this hospital. There are people here, nurses, whose parents wouldn’t approve of what you were doing—because I assume you are very communistic.’
I said, ‘Not at all, I don’t belong to any communist party. But if that’s the way you feel, Matron, if you think I’m going to infiltrate the nurses, I’ve got no contract with you, so I’ll go. Thank you, Matron.’ And I walked out.
I think she was a bit flabbergasted. I told one of the girls about it and she said, ‘Good. If you leave, would you volunteer for Spain?’
I said I knew nothing about Spain—I didn’t know anything.
She said I wanted educating, so she told me all about Spain—how the nuns were taking Franco’s side, and, of course, it grabbed my heart—I was young and very emotional. She told me, ‘You go to London, go to Tottenham Court Road, and you’ll see the people—the Spanish Medical Aid. Talk to them.’
So that was that, and that was when I first met my boss, I always remember him—Goryan. I think he must have been Yugoslav or similar—I never knew, but you never worried what nationality or political party people belonged to. Goryan was very good. He asked me all about my nursing—did I know anything about theatre work? We used to get amputations in ‘surgical’ from accidents, being in central London—so we had lots of accidents. I’d had wonderful theatre experience at Charing Cross, so I said, ‘Yes, I know a lot about theatre work, I worked at…’ But that was enough.
‘Well, you’re going somewhere where you’ll be very, very busy.’
Despite my theatre experience, the Spanish Medical Aid people still wanted me to do a radiology training course. ‘No, surgery is my calling, that’s what I’m good at because I worked in theatre.’ That seemed to suit them, so they handed me my ticket, and I was off.
On 6 January 1937 I left England as one of a party of four English nurses to report for duty with the Spanish Medical Aid Committee in Barcelona. Setting out was exciting enough for me because I had never been abroad before—not even set foot on board ship.
We went to France, were put up overnight and mooched around the next day—we wasted practically two days in France—but we had to get paperwork filled in. Then we boarded a train for Spain. It was a terrible, terrible journey into Spain to Port-Bou—which was a horrible place.
We arrived at the frontier at one o’clock, and we had our first experience of the war. The carriage next to ours in the train that was to take us to Barcelona was badly smashed and battered, and, while we waited, we saw our first aerial bombardment. It was far out to sea—the ships and planes were almost out of sight, the sound of the guns was faint—but the Spaniards were very excited, running about and pointing, with shouts of ‘Aviones! Aviones!’—all for very little, it seemed to me. While waiting, we sat in the sun outside a little open-air restaurant, where we had a meal of meat, rice, olives, fruit and coffee.
When the train at last arrived it had funny open carriages with wooden benches, and we didn’t have much room for ourselves and our luggage. It was mostly full of soldiers, and at each station on the line the train stopped and more Spanish soldiers got in, with much shouting and waving of handkerchiefs, while peasants and girls along the platform handed out armfuls of oranges to anyone who wanted them.
We were altogether three days in Barcelona. In the shops, food didn’t seem very plentiful, but I thought clothes were cheap, and our taxi was certainly the cheapest we had ever been in. There were hardly any signs of war, but still, as compared to other towns I had known, there was an air of tension about.
We made our way to the station with all our luggage—probably no one had ever gone to Spain as well equipped as we were. We had sleeping bags, leather leggings, boiler suits, blankets, nurses’ overalls, gas masks and various utensils. But, oh dear, when we got to the station! Inexperienced as we were, we didn’t yet know that this was wartime, and that people might already have been waiting the whole day to make sure of getting a place. The train was crammed full, with soldiers occupying every inch of the corridors, and one glance showed there wasn’t an earthly hope of getting all our luggage in. Our temporary organiser, who didn’t strike me as likely to organise anything, was in despair. He said it would be absurd to think
