The man in the doorway

Barbara elvy Strate

On my third scheduled trip to the Dorking Cottage Hospital, by bus from my home in Sutton, I walked up the steep path to the portico and front door. The matron greeted me and took me to an examining room in the lower level of the white and red brick facility. I met a different doctor than the ones I'd met on my two previous visits. Matron had explained to me in January, when Sherman and I made arrangements for the birth of our first baby, that on the home front the medical profession had been hit hard by WWII. Our country had been stripped of doctors, nurses and technicians to tend the wounded in many war zones.

The doctor and matron agreed that I should return the next day because a mother had checked out early and a bed had been vacated in the maternity ward. Somehow I sent word to Sherman and the next day, with my personal belongings, I returned to the Cottage Hospital alone. A nurse escorted me to the lower level and gave me a cup of hot milk with what I presume contained castor oil, which floated on top of the milk. Like a good patient I drank it. YUCK. She helped me into bed and left. Alone, in the semi-dark room, not knowing how babies arrived into the world (people didn't talk freely about such things in my day), I wasn't scared, but it would have been comforting to have someone with me through the labor pains.

The baby's head had started through the cavity when a doctor and matron appeared. I heard the doctor say "A beautiful baby boy, even though a little early." The natural birth was not my choice. There just wasn't anything available to ease the pains of childbirth, as medical supplies were much needed on the battlefronts.

I awoke in one of the 12 beds where I would stay for my 14-day confinement in the maternity ward. Soon after, a parade of three nurses, led by matron, marched in single file, military-style through the doorway, with a baby in each arm, wrapped snugly in blankets to be breast-fed. Matron softly sang, "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." I knew she had David. She laid him in my arms as she whispered, "He is our first Yank baby born in this hospital. We are honored." Our first-born had his Daddy's coloring. Blue eyes and soft blond hair.

Visiting hours were Sundays and Wednesdays from 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. One visitor per person in each of those time periods was the rule, which was normal for hospitals throughout Britain. During one of Mum's evening visits, matron bustled to my bedside. She addressed Mother, "I'm breaking a rule to ask if you would mind giving up your time. Barbara has an important visitor." Mother kissed my cheek and left my bedside.

I watched her walk away and stop to talk with a man, leaning against the door jam in a relaxed manner, dressed in the uniform of the 8th Air Force. As he started toward me I recognized my husband's slow, easy gait and his slow, mischievous smile. He handed me a bouquet of two dozen red roses saying, "If you wonder what happened to the heads, they were caught in the electric doors of the underground train." Every head was bent. "Bill came with me but isn't allowed in the ward. He sends his love and congratulations." (Bill was his navigator in the RCAF.)

Matron brought our son to meet his Dad. She put David in his arms. Blue eyes met blue yes. "He has your coloring," I said, while he swayed from side to side with his son. He said as much to me as to David, "How would you like to live in Bovindgon, son. That's where we will be for awhile." David maintained a serious expression throughout his time with his Dad. Matron came to take him back to the nursery, congratulated Sherman on his beautiful son and seemed not to be able to hold back from eyeing his uniform from head to toe. It was a very different style and color from the majority of military uniforms worn by the men in the fighting forces that derived from Europe and British dominions. Dusty pink trousers, topped with greenish, brown tunic, light khaki shirt and dark green tie. Lots of bright, brass buttons and sliver insignias. The Yanks stood out in a crow in their flashy uniforms.

Before he said goodbye he told me, "I applied for a transfer to the American Forces and my new station will be Bovingdon, Herfordshire, north of London."

If I scooted to the right of my bed I could look through a large window, for a colorful view of the gardens below and could watch the daily parade of perambulators, one baby in each, wheeled by the nurses to an area sheltered form wind by a tall privet hedge. After the 10 a.m. feeding, be it rain or sunshine, the parade under my window started. Getting accustomed to the elements at such a young age is one reason the English children have beautiful rosy cheeks.

All the prams were glossy black and had leather fitted, weatherproof covers with a windbreaker flap that could be secured to within about three inches of the top of the shade. Babies are snug and warm in the deep belly of the pram. The prams, remind me of glossy pictures of family, horse drawn carriages with leg covers and hoods, larger back wheels than front, that I have seen in reproduced editions of Sears and Roebuck 1900s catalogs.

Being young and healthy and bored with daily bed rest, on my tenth day I asked matron if I could be out of bed and go home one day short of my 14th day. She debated a minute than granted my request. With a nurse at my side I slipped into my ballerina robe and placed my feet on the floor. Pins and needles shot through my legs. A sensation new to me. I sat on the edge of the bed, wiggled my toes, swung my legs back and forth, and tried again to stand. I could walk around the bed, steadying myself on the iron bed frame. Then sat down. Periodically during that day and the next my steps were steady. The pins and needles sensation didn't return. Sherman came to pick us up on day 13.

He had a taxi waiting. Matron's remarks when she saw it said, "How posh." (smart, elegant). With a pleasant smile she shook our hands and wished us good luck, but no instructions on baby care, which I sadly needed.

The taxi ride was a luxury as Dorking is located about eight miles from my home in Sutton. The leisurely ride through small villages, past fields where wild, deep pink Briar roses bloomed on hedgerows and patches of white daisies, foxglove and blue lupine dotted the green hillsides. The sight of a taxi in front of our house, I'm sure, gave our neighbors food for gossip. They were "over the fence" gossips, which my Mum never, ever took part in, neither did her children. In the house, Sherman discarded his tunic and released his shirttails to take his son, David Mark Wilbur State, born April 8, 1943, for a sunshine walk along the back garden path. Our baby was wrapped in the knitted shawl made by his Nanny (Grandmother).

I have a vivid picture close to my heart of the new Daddy's shirttails moving as he walked. If our neighbors saw him, they had more fuel for gossip, as no British male would face the public showing his shirttail

Note:

In April 1979 David and I went to England, his first tip to his birth county. In 1972 I made my first trip home since arrival on American soil in 1944. Mick, my nephew-in-law, took us from the airport to the Dorking Cottage Hospital. Rain drizzled. Nothing was the same. Foliage along the entry steps was overgrown and sad to say the gardens were unattended. The large white and red brick facility was under restoration for a future kindergarten and pre-school. Outside what once had been the nursery, and off limits to the mothers when David was born, on an old Singer sewing machine stood a set of baby scales which I'd bet were in use before and after his birth. I debated on asking a workman if I could have them. I reconsidered my thought, as they would have been costly to ship to the States. The base was solid iron. Were we given the OK to go upstairs to the maternity ward where we looked through the window to see nurses wheeling the prams. It was nostalgic.