The four conspirators rescued me. "Come on Georgina. We're on operating room at 0400, and a girl needs some sleep if she is to face up to that after a party." I was safe, but like a dog behind a fence, I be- came cheeky. "I guess I will have to go," I said to 'my' Captain. “That's a pity. we were just getting to know one another, weren't we?" If ever a girl propositioned a guy, that was it.

I left him high and dry, doing my best to wiggle my bottom at him as I walked to the door with the four girls. Back in the quarters Georgina was hurriedly disposed of, and the night guard on the gates was distracted long enough for this Digger to get safely out of the 'nurses only' area.

Back in my own quarters I was flat (emotionally as well as physically the girls had done a good job with the curves). And I had done it. I had passed.

Next afternoon one of the girls phoned me from the operating block. "Do you know a Nurse Georgina James? Capt. is here looking for her." How she managed to say those words in the presence of the Cap- tain without laughing, I will never know. It took me about two min- utes to get up there to see the fun.

"We told him we didn't know anyone of that name, but that as she must be a new girl he should enquire at the Orderly Room. He's on the way there now."

I got there first, and was busily reading the next week's rosters when the Captain arrived and began to question the Orderly Room Sergeant about Nurse James. I was standing only six feet away from him when, exasperated, he positively shouted, "Damnitall. You must have a record of her. She transferred here only this week from Divvy HQ. I was talk- ing to her last night."

*

Poor bloke. I can picture him now in 1971 . . . on a couch, saying, “It all began at a party in a Military Hospital in 1943. I thought there was this girl, see ...

25