Sky Wards

Over eight eventful decades, from 1918 to 2000 and beyond, the RAF's own nursing service has tended the sick and wounded, developing unique skills in in-flight nursing. Now, for the first time, the full and fascinating story is revealed in Sky Wards. After the Great War ended, the service's continued existence - along with that of the RAF itself - was the cause of bitter discord in Whitehall. But the Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service survived, and expanded, called for duty across three continents during the Second World War. Since 1945 its members have cared for casualties of other conflicts, from Korea to the Balkans, plus thousands of individual peacetime emergencies, many of which are chronicled in this book. The author has also compiled the first complete lists of RAF hospitals at home and overseas. These locations, from Iceland to Japan yield a wealth of true-life reminiscences. The stories of desert dust, Arctic ice, lost limbs and bullet wounds, snakes, romance, malaria, the black 'Dick', and the dreaded mosquito boots are vividly told in the words of those who were there, adding a human - and often hilarious - dimension to this well researched and immensely readable history. Sky Wards is essential reading for anyone with an interest in nursing, or in the RAF, or simply in an extraordinary account of the indomitable human spirit.