Audrey Rhoads: World War II through a nurse's eyes

COEUR d’ALENE — As bombs were falling on England during World War II, a young Audrey Rhoads (then Audrey Jones) comforted children who were sick and scared.

She was assigned to care for youths with tuberculosis and orthopedic diseases when she herself was still a child.

"I helped the children because you knew some of them were going to die, and some of them knew they were going to die, and you just had to live with it," she said softly in her English accent. "We had them when they couldn’t sleep at night. We’d talk to them and sing songs.

"I hated it when a child died. They had TB and TB in orthopedic, so they had it in their bones. It was hard to see."

It was each person's duty to sign up for war service at the age of 15, she explained.

"As soon as I had my 17th birthday, four days later I was training to be a nurse, and on-the-job nursing too," she said. "I went straight from boarding school straight to being a student nurse. I learned on the job.”

Now 89 and fighting her own ailment of Parkinson's disease, Rhoads remembers caring for children in war-torn England as clear as day.

And it wasn't all bad. She said it was quite fun being a single young lady when so many handsome young soldiers were hoping to spend some time with pretty girls before going to battle. She married an English fighter pilot and had children with him, but later divorced and eventually married American decorated Vietnam war veteran, Dusty Rhoads, who swept her away to scenic North Idaho when he retired in 1988.

"I came with Dusty sightseeing to see if I like it," she said of visiting the States. "He wasn’t sure that I’d like it, so he brought me over for a holiday. I met his relatives, I met his friends and I saw Idaho. I said, ‘Your relatives are lovely but I’ll go for Idaho.’ I love the lake and the rivers and the forest."

Although she misses England from time to time, her bookshelves are packed with tomes containing photos and information about her native land. The shelves also reveal Audrey's love of history, and her book collection would impress any professor.

She's seen her share of the good and bad in the world, but Audrey's sense of humor and ability to take it as it comes are characteristics she has carried with her through life as a member of the Greatest Generation.

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Why did you choose to be a nurse?

"I didn’t. My mother took me to see a film about Florence Nightingale. And after we saw the film, she said, ‘What do you think of that, Audrey?’ And I said, ‘Oh quite nice, Mummy,’ and that was it, she enrolled me as a nurse, I had no option."

What was it like being a nurse in World War II?

"The Americans came over in 1944 and they were stationed on the village green because there was nowhere to put them except for in tents. I used to take the juniors (about age 12) to bed because we had so many during the war — their parents were in the war service or scattered all over the place that they came to our boarding school and you had to take the juniors to bed to make sure that they were all right. They stayed there during the night, it was the doctor’s house so they knew they were safe. But we had to walk through these rows and rows of tents, and the kids said to me, ‘Oh, Audrey, I’m afraid,’ and I’d say, ‘Don’t be afraid, there’s nothing to it,’ and one of the (military) boys said, ‘Oh Audrey, I’ll be off duty soon, wait for me,’ so that set them off in shrieks of laughter, they found it funny. I was 16, coming up to 17."

Did you treat soldiers too?

"No, my mother insisted that I start with children and mature to the more adult themes of going to London. I at that time was enrolled at the country hospital, connected to Great Ormond Street Hospital, so when you did your two and a half years there, you could go to Great Ormond Street for the rest of your training. But I ran away and got married. I never wanted to be a nurse, I hated to see children die. And they did. One of them, they had TB in the brain, meningitis, and they had these weird shrieking calls late at night. (The hospital) was eight blocks and they were divided up into different age groups so the young men, they were at one end and 17 and the girls were at the other end and they were 16, then you had the in betweens, and they were lovely children. One of them, I forgot to say goodnight to him one night and the bed was just opposite the door, it was wide.

And I said, ‘Bye everybody’ and off I went, and a shrieking (boy) said, ‘Nurse Jones!’ and he got his cot and he banged it across the room and he went straight through the doors, cracked the glass and he said, ‘You didn’t say goodbye to me!’ so I gave him a kiss, and that was it. I got very attached to them, and you shouldn’t, it’s very hard."

What would you do for fun when you weren't busy with war service?

“You weren’t supposed to go on the beach heads or on the cliff tops because they barbed wired it. There were some areas that were full of barbed wire, and some places where there wasn’t any because it wasn’t needed and they couldn’t afford it. We knew that, and we used to swim at our favorite beach and have fun. The boys came out from (their favorite places to swim) and they’d have buried all your underwear so it was full of sand, so you’d have to find it first (chuckles). We made our fun that way. We had to. We didn’t see ourselves as immortals. We were aware of the war, we had the Navy, the Army and the Air Force on our doorstep.

“A majority of the young people quite enjoyed it because you were doing something, you were serving a purpose. And it was fun, because life was short, and the men would say, ‘I might be dead tomorrow, come on, let’s go have a drink,’ even though we weren’t supposed to and we weren’t old enough we used to knock them back.

"It was great fun. So many young men. I had taken up nursing in ’44, just come out of boarding school, and we had all these lonely men. All the servicemen had dances particularly at Christmas and stuff like that. The matron of the hospital that I worked in had a list and I was not on it because I didn’t want to be, and she said, ‘Nurse Jones, you’re going to this dance, and you’re going to enjoy yourself,’ and off I went.

“When we were young and 17 and all we went to was dances we met all these different servicemen. We met the Canadians, the Australians, New Zealand, Americans, South Africans and the English and they said, ‘We don’t stand a chance,’ because they have a lousy uniform, you know, and the American uniform was spiffy."

Is there anything else you would want our community to know about your service during the war?

“I earned 12 shillings and 11 pence a week as a student training. I bought ‘Lest We Forget,’ a book about the concentration camps, and it took all my pay for that week because it was 12 and 11 to buy the book.”

After living through such a horrific war that involved so many people and so many lives, do you have any hopes or wishes for the future of our world?

“I think we’re wiser now than we were then. We were very naive. I think we thought the Great War would be the last war, but there’s always going to be a war, always somewhere, because that’s the only way they can settle it. It’s their doctrine. I don’t say it’s Communist, I don’t say it’s anything, it’s just man, and they like war. They do. And of course, when we were young, we thought war was great too. Except when we got bombed and lost our homes. That wasn’t quite so jolly. I don’t think any time did you sit and weep and wail. It wasn’t any good because the next night they’d come and do it again. I mean, I saw Plymouth, particularly. It was so bright in Plymouth they wouldn’t allow any newspapers to reprint the story because it was in flames. Burned for three days because it was a big ship building and training ground.”

What’s something that really stuck with you, or how did your war service change you?

“You had to do it with laughter. You had to for the children’s sake. You couldn’t let them see you cry. I used to take my shoes off and put them on the wrong feet. And my nurse’s band, I’d turn that down … I was mopping the floor and I’d make them laugh. We had a miserable sister who wouldn’t allow the radio on or anything. As soon as she went off duty, we’d get the bread and butter out and we’d slap all the stuff on — she would be strict with the margarine and a little bit of peanut butter and that was it — so we lashed it all on with jam. We just made fun, we had to. Laughter is the one best thing.”