Ward Three can have a very intense atmosphere and this must be one of the reasons why so many romances have sprung up between nurses and patients. I caught one of the volunteer nurses (the blonde girl from Chelsea) with one of the patients yesterday in a very compromising position in one of the linen cupboards. I did not say anything but merely shut the door on his naked buttocks, pyjamas by his ankles, and her very surprised face. I don’t think that this is the time for being some sort of moral guardian; for all I know we will be invaded next week and soon after, transported to some kind of intern camp in Germany where we will be breaking rocks with hammers. Let them have their fun while they can. I neither approve nor disapprove. My one concern is for the patients’ welfare; that is my sole mission in life now and if by getting better it means they are starting to have sex with the nurses, then I suppose it is a good thing rather than bad. They’re young men after all.

But I feel more like a mother to these boys, anyway. I was always attracted to a slightly older man. Robert was 35 when I married him. I had to give up my nursing career for him (the Royal College of Nursing rules state ‘no married women’) and it is only because of his death that I returned to nursing at all.

I have been at the hospital for long enough for the Maestro to invite me to the theatre the other day to watch an operation and help the Theatre Sister as she in turn assisted him. I had no fear of watching the surgery as I have seen so many gruesome sights that I was sure the clean conditions of the operating theatre would hold no nasty surprises for me. I washed thoroughly, put on the theatre scrubs and a face mask and stood behind the theatre sister looking over the patient while the Maestro, standing behind the patient’s head, with long black rubber gloves, attached grafts to make the patient’s new eyelids. The operating theatre was busy with trainee surgeons, anxious to see what the great man was up to, along with orderlies and another nurse. I felt very privileged to stand there and watch such a procedure; it is the highlight so far of my career as a nurse, and one that very few other nurses will get to see.

With such a lot going on, it has been easy not to think about Mr Rhodes, the journalist who I saw here the other day. Everything at the moment is full-steam ahead: there are more aircraft flying overhead, more convoys of lorries on the roads, and more work in the hospital. I don’t think there will be any summer holidays or trips to the seaside for me this year!

There are also plenty of new patients arriving at the hospital. A Hurricane pilot from Biggin Hill arrived the other day, with the charred remnants of a red silk scarf grasped in the bandaged claws of his right hand.

‘That looks like it was a lovely scarf,’ I said when I saw him. ‘I’m sure we can find you a new one in the town somewhere.’

‘We were the red silk pirates,’ he said sadly and almost inaudibly, ‘boys playing games in the sky with planes and bullets. Now look at us. Two of us dead, me burned to a crisp, and goodness only knows what will happen to George.’