Ascension : Sheila Hetherington (nee Wood)
Submitted by The Islander (Nathan Prince) 22.05.2008 (Article Archived on 05.06.2008)

Hullo, I don't know why I went to the Ascension Island website after so many years, maybe I'm at that age when you look back on your life and all the places you've been to.

My father worked for Cable and Wireless for 50 years and I used to read about Ascension and it's Hospital in The Zodiac, C & W's magazine, so, when I was due to leave the RAF Nursing Service I applied for a job as Theatre Sister there. In fact, when I went for my interview I knew far more about the island than anyone at Mercury House, as I had read Duff Hart-Davis' book Ascension.

My name is Sheila Hetherington but I was  Sheila Wood then, a Midwife and the only Theatre Sister on Ascension from September 1974 until, I think March 1976. Coincidentally, I took over from Angela Wood who was the previous Theatre Sister (no relation). I remember my time there with great affection. Of course it is so different now, especially since the Falklands War. 

There were 4 of us, all Midwives and one of us a Theatre Sister - me. We did 12 hour shifts with,I think, 2 days off a week. The hospital had 12 beds, rarely full, often empty. Even if the hospital was empty we still had to do our shifts. We used tennis racquets to ward off the locusts that dive bombed us as we walked to work. We four lived in the Ladies Mess with two teachers.

We were entitled to have a free 3 minute phone call home once a month as we were Cable and Wireless employees.

I loved my time on Ascension, and though we were not very busy most of the time there were, every so often, challenging occasions. For instance, there was a very sad fatal car crash on the Green Mountain road when the Williams family lost both their parents. The three of us who were not on duty were at the Volcano Club watching a film and were called out with a message flashed on the screen for all Georgetown Medical Staff to return to the Hospital. We worked with two of us on nights and two on days for quite a few days. I can't remember the names of all the children, but I do remember the little boy who was in Gallows traction for some time. He was called William Wilberforce Williams. Their Grandparents had to adopt them all. 

Then there was the time when the SMO had a heart attack! He recovered well so it couldn't have been that serious but I can tell you it was pretty scary at the time. I can't really remember the details except that he wasn't as bad a patient as we had feared he might be!

We also had a Russian "fishing boat" crew man who had a burst appendix. As far as I can remember, there were two huge 'seamen' outside Theatre and a big woman doctor from the boat who insisted on standing 'on guard' inside Theatre in outdoor clothes to make sure that we only drained the appendix.

As the only Theatre Sister I was always on call so I used to have 4 days up on Green Mountain in Rock Cottage not going far from the phone. We didn't have bleeps or mobile phones in those days.

We got our mail from the MAC flight and the American surveillance aircraft were called Snoopy partly because of it's nose and also obviously, because it snooped. We were told that if the volcano erupted, we, that is the whole island population, would be taken off in a Galaxy aircraft, but then someone said that the fault line was across the runway!! I don't know how true any of that was but it wasn't something that stopped us enjoying island life. There was a UK flight of Caledonian Airlines about every few months but the highlight of the year was the arrival every 3 months of the Good Hope Castle boat which brought us fresh fruit and lots of other goodies. Most of the island had a day off. We ordered great modern American clothes from J C Penney and Sears catalogues.

I had an American boyfriend who worked for RCA, who amazingly,I met again in Saudi 15 years later! Then I went out with a guy who was with CSO and with whom I helped to build a beach house, definitely not a hut, with all the wood that NASA and Bendix had dumped, including, I think rocket boxes. The only photos I have are of our building that large beach house.There was even a Double Loo on the dump but we decided not to use that. We had a natural pool there, but before we swam we had to wade in with goggles to check that no Moray Eels had been washed in from the sea overnight. We fished and caught lots and lots of Grouper, but if we got a Moray Eel on the line, and you could tell because the line 'twistled', we called on the St Helenians to take it off the hook.

We swam at Comfortless Cove. We lay on our bellies at night on Long Beach with a piece of red crepe paper over our torches to watch in wonder as turtles laid their eggs and then some months later were amazed as the newly hatched baby turtles exploded from the sand and found their way to the sea.

I feel quite sad to see that our Ladies Mess is now the Obsidian Hotel but appreciate that things move on.  

There are so many things I don't remember but I do remember standing on Wideawake Plain with the terns just everywhere, also catching a couple of land crabs in a box to have them killed, preserved and varnished. Sounds awful but that's what we did then. The trouble was, I had them in a box on the back seat of my car when I was on nights. I happened to glance at the car from my seat in the office and, to my horror saw that they'd both escaped and were free in my car!! This was 2 a.m so I couldn't call anyone to help. It was a very interesting adventure trying to get them back in the box!

Peter Critchley ran the farm at the top of Green Mountain. Does anyone know anything about him now? I think he went to New Zealand. There was also a chap we called Grubby who worked for the BBC. Of course I could never forget Sid who was a wonderful hospital technician from St Helena. He and his colleague (whose name I'm ashamed to say I can't remember) did all the lab work, portering, running in theatre and everything else that we didn't do. We could never have run the hospital without them. I do keep in touch with one of the nurses I worked with, Andrina who married the Commander of the US base Hank Spangler. Sadly all other names have gone from my memory, which is such a shame as I do remember that everyone was so friendly and helpful.

I often wonder if I should visit Ascension again but since it is now so different perhaps that wouldn't be such a good idea.

I am now 65 and more or less retired from theatre nursing. I have lived in Perth, Scotland for a couple of years, but plan to return to Suffolk, because, although I am a Scot, I have been away most of my working life and miss my friends down south. 

I had hoped to access very old copies of The Islander but that doesn't seem possible.

Yours sincerely,

Sheila Hetherington  (nee Wood)