An operating theatre at sea, Jan Gordon.
This is Gordon’s account of the scene aboard a light cruiser after she had been in action:
The operating room was the stoker’s bathroom, about twelve feet square. The centre of the room was occupied by a light portable operating table. The bathroom had a tiled floor and the blood could run away. Bare-armed, the fleet surgeon and a young doctor were working with desperate but methodical haste. They were just taking a man’s leg off above the knee.
Our doctors were hard at it for eleven hours.
Aft, in the wardroom, as it was the largest room in the ship, we placed all the seriously wounded. The long table was covered with men, all lying very still and silently white.
An operating theatre at sea, Jan Gordon.
A young doctor was bending over one man. He signalled the sick berth attendant to remove him. Four stokers, still grimy from the stoke hold, lifted the body and carried it out. Two men were on the sideboard. Others were in armchairs. Water was slopping in from a hole in the side. In this ankle-deep flood, bloodstained bandages floated to and fro. One poor fellow lay like a marble statue on the wardroom table. There were no injuries on him. He was dying of shock. I used to go in and look at him. He seemed so peaceful and still that it was almost impossible to believe that in that body life was yielding inch by inch to death.