I was wide-eyed and young and eager and excited. I worked on the 3rd floor which was the obstetrics ward and the nursery. Yeah, I don’t know how I got stuck with that, but I grew to enjoy it. I worked with Edwards and Larry most of the time. I felt like we were the 3 amigos. We took care of the pregnant navy wives from Naples, mostly. I was in on most of the deliveries during the day shift and night shift. We switched every once in a while for training purposes. Every experience of birth was the experience of a lifetime, each time. There was, of course, a Doctor and a nurse and me. I took the baby after it was delivered and used the suction machine to suck the mucous out of the nose and mouth and then put silver nitrate drops in their eyes and then cleaned them up with baby oil and cotton balls and put them in the incubator. I watched them closely for a while until the nurse OK’d putting him/her in the nursery. Before putting them in the nursery I weighed them and put the bracelet name tag and took ‘foot prints’. I was always amazed when I was handed the baby by the doctor. They truly did not all look alike.
Of course, my job was also to clean up the delivery room after each use and get it ready for the next use. Another job was making rounds in the nursery every half hour and check each baby. Also, to take the baby to the mother if she breast fed them during the night. Otherwise I or Edwards would bottle feed them at the right times. Yes, we also had to change their diapers as needed which was more than we liked. And yes, I had been hit by that proverbial ‘pee-spray’ at the wrong time more than once.
On one round of my shift in particular, in the middle of the night, I noticed one baby was not breathing and was flailing around and turning blue. I grabbed him by his two legs and ran to the delivery room and used the suction machine to clean out his mouth and nose. He immediately began to gasp and cry and his color returned to normal. He was okay! After I watched him for a while I took him back to the nursery. When I told the night nurse what had happened she simply said “OK”. No one knows that I probably saved a baby’s life except me, but That’s alright. I had a good educational and satisfying job while I was there. I look back on it with mostly fine memories.
Now Edwards was a different matter. He hated the nursery. He wanted a transfer to a different ward. Everyone knew this. Almost anywhere but in the nursery. After a few months he told me that he had a plan to get out. I couldn’t imagine what it would be.
It was mostly routine duty through the days and nights. Occasionally in the evenings, when we didn’t go on liberty into town or Naples, We would ‘order in’, so to speak. These were my best times. In the apartment behind us were several families. One of the ‘ragazzi’ (young boys) of one of the families would hear us calling from our balcony. He had attached a basket on the end of a long pole and would extend it over to our balcony. We would put, usually, way too much money in it and tell him “Dieci oppure dodice pizza e due bottigli di vino” which was '10 or 12 pizza's and 2 bottles of wine'. He had done this enough times that he pretty much knew what we wanted. We had to do it this way as we weren’t supposed to drink on the hospital property.
Out on the balcony, (shown above with me) we reasoned, wasn’t too illegal. After about an hour or less the ragazzo would return with about twelve margherita pizzas’ and a couple bottles of wine. He was always paid well for the trip. Now this pizza was like nothing I have found today or any time since. I have tried. They were about 8 or 9 inches and had tomato and basil and mozzarella and olive oil. You could not eat them like you do anywhere else. We would fold it over and eat it like a sandwich and it was so fresh and soft it would almost melt in your mouth. It dripped while you ate it. I usually ate about three of them and wash it down with the really good wine. We really would not have fit into a classy restaurant the way we ate but it was unbelievably delicious. Again, one of those memories that one never forgets and the buddies you shared it all with.
Meanwhile, getting back to Edwards. We were on the night shift on a Saturday night. Now if you can picture a nurse at a desk and in front of the desk was the corridor that went all the way to the other end of the building. Off of this corridor were doors to the delivery room and two ward rooms where the patients slept and various closets and rest rooms. The nursery was half way down the corridor. Except for the lamp on the nurses’ desk and one light at the end of the corridor and the light coming out of the nursery door windows, it was rather dark at night. No one was wandering around at night anyway, except us. I was up at the desk writing in a chart near the nurse while Edwards was bundling the babies in a blanket and taking them to their mothers one at a time for breast feeding time. It is a very quiet time except for the swinging doors from the nursery. All of a sudden, at one point, Edwards come out of the nursery and had a bundled blanket in his arms which he suddenly threw up into the air and yelled “I can’t take this any more”. The nurse and I looked up and saw this bundle bounce on the floor and I was sure that Edwards had finally lost it. The nurse turned white and run down to the bundle, as did I. Edwards was leaning against the wall with a grin. The bundle, it turned out, was a bundle of blankets. No baby inside. The humor was lost on the nurse, which I understood. Edwards was put on report and yes, he was taken off the ward and replaced by Larry the next night. Edwards was switched to being a driver for the Commander. It fit him well. No one really ever talked about that incident for fear of what some of the women patients would think if they knew of it. Of course, Edwards knew that.
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