Speaker - Jane Clark - 'Sister Sunshine' - A Local Wartime Romance

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sister-Sunshine-Wartime-Jane-Clark-x/dp/1515398722

 

You know you are in for a good read when you see a stunning book cover and a warm title. Sister Sunshine: A Wartime Romance is the most moving and personal book I have read about the QAs. It collects the diary and letters of Nursing Sister Joy Barber who joined the QAIMNS in 1942 and her future husband Tony Case who saw action in North Africa and Italy with the Sherwood Foresters. Joy too served in these locations with the 103 Hospital and fortuitously their paths crossed and romance blossomed despite the front line activities. 

 

Joy was given the nickname Sister Sunshine because she was always smiling and cheerful and this is reflected in her journal and correspondence. We learn about her first posting to Leeds Castle near Maidstone where she nursed at this officers' hospital and soon follow in her footsteps through various postings overseas. 

 

There is plenty of humour throughout: we learn about her first taste of rum whilst anchored off Gibraltar due to U-boat activity and what she thought of some of the Matrons! Whilst Tony finds fun in his tale of going to a barber's in Algiers and coming out looking like a wartime spiv with a pencil moustache which he quickly removed himself. 

 

The couple cleverly overcame the army censor in their letters by using code based on Bob Hope and Bing Crosby films to reveal their locations and movements to each other. Tony saw brutal fighting against the Germans during the Tunisian Campaign and was injured. His letters give us a deeper insight into the thoughts of patients in the 5th and 94th General Hospital and their treatments. The Sisters are all old and ugly and their uniforms don't fit. Oh what memories the sight of the grey and red bring back. Joy is soon able to visit him in the 94th General Base Hospital in Algiers and this prompts a marriage proposal and soon we are reading about the hurdles the couple had to overcome in their relationship and with military bureaucracy. This included Joy having to ask permission from her Matron, Miss Blore of the Territorial Army Nursing Service and gaining a licence from the Consul. 

 

The personal theme continues with Joy's daughter, Jane E K Clark, adding explanations to explain gaps in letters or additional information to seamlessly continue this wartime romance. This includes an account of the first civilian child to be administered the recently invented and manufactured penicillin and how this new antibiotic was administered. Even Joy's brother, Freddie, who served with the 8th Army, is able to surprise Joy and Tony on separate occasions to truly make this a family book.