”The river is constantly turning and bending. You never know where it’s going to go or where you’ll end up. Following the bend in the river and staying on your own path means you are on the right track. Don’t let anyone deter you from that.”
Eartha Kitt
My childhood was a game of two halves. Born in Liverpool June 1940, the blitzkrieg thrown at this strategic port by the German Luftwaffe determined that while many died, women with young children were evacuated into the safety of rural Snowdonia. So it was that I, Anne Watts, came to be raised in this beautiful part of Wales. My father, an officer in the Merchant Navy appeared unannounced at intervals. War time meant secretive movement, blackouts and severe food rationing. A glamorous figure in his shiny buttoned uniform, his appearance always greeted with tears of joy from my mother; tears of desolation when he left. I loved him for his laughter, cuddles and unexpected gifts.
I was too little to understand anything of the Battle of the Atlantic, the Merchant Navy convoys running the gauntlet of u-boat torpedos, or that he would be a changed man when the war ended in 1945. That would come later. For now my mother, an experienced nurse, kept the home fires burning. Life became a tumbling cavalcade of memories; my special friends, the three German prisoners of war who came to work in the large garden; standing on the garden gate waving to lines of tanks and military ‘ducks’ trundling from the beach to somewhere else; red bereted soldiers waving and grand father visiting when he could—weary from the bombing in the city, reading me stories and holding me tight. He died before my third birthday. Funny thing memory. Father left the sea in 1947 and like all returning service men mandated by government to use every piece of land to grow food for family and community. It was fun. We grew vegetables, kept pigs, turkeys and chickens. Boys from the village brought salmon or rabbits to the back door for a few pennies. Illegal probably—was that black marketeering?
Abruptly, everything changed in 1950. Mother died and was never, ever spoken of again. As a nightmare second marriage became a disaster zone I was pitched into survival mode. School became my safe place and I did not let cruel bullying get the better of me.
In 1958 I followed the solid, traditional nurse/midwife training offered by 1960s Britain, so the world opened up to my dreams of travel and caring for people, taking me on a journey of extremes.
From brutal war zones to the dispossessed in refugee camps; burning deserts to the frozen Arctic tundra; to the stunning beauty of the Himalayas and tropical sunsets to take the breath away. I learned life lessons impossible to learn in any classroom.
I spoke little of what I had witnessed over some 45 years. Gradually I realised that when I died, these stories would die with me. Not good enough. They needed to be told. I finally gave writing a go.
I’ve written two books, Always the Children and A Nurse Abroad and in both I wanted you, the reader, to feel as though you were looking over my shoulder, seeing and feeling what I was seeing and feeling.
Bad stuff happens to good people. Seems it always has.
There is a magnificence in each and every one of us if only we take the time to find it, to listen to it and hear that inner voice that we are usually too busy to listen to.
The strength of the human spirit unfolded in front of me. We all have it. I learned how essential our shared humanity is. It never changes no matter what history throws at us. We are all in this together. There is no Planet B.
Stories are magic. They can create other worlds, emotions and ideas and make the everyday seem incredible. They teach us empathy; take us on terrific journeys; make us laugh, cry or jump with fright and then comfort us with a happy ending. Nursing is a wonderful profession, that gives a privileged insight into the human condition.
From war zones to refugee camps housing the dispossessed; burning deserts to the frozen Arctic tundra; to the stunning beauty of the Himalayas and tropical sunsets to take the breath away. I learned life lessons impossible to learn in any classroom.
To read details and view image galleries of the places where I have nursed, please use the interactive map below.
