Devon nurse, 104, remembers heart-wrenching frontline hospital service on VE Day

VE Day memories are not all street parties with blancmange, booze and ice cream – for many who served the recollections are of feeling numb and exhausted following months of being exposed to the horrors of war.

This was the case for a 104-year-old Devon woman, then Lieutenant Launa Mary Stephenson, whose memories of wartime service in frontline field hospitals from D-Day to Germany as an assistant surgeon and nurse have been shared by Devon County Council on the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

“I had seen so much death and horror I was just numb. So much of it I had to block out of my mind.”

Earlier today (Thursday, May 8), council chairman John Hart joined councillors and members of DCC’s senior leadership team to raise the Union Flag above County Hall to mark VE Day.

Councillor Hart was joined by DCC chief executive Donna Manson to honour and pay tribute to the Second World War generation.

To mark the anniversary, the council has shared Launa’s story, which contrasts sharply with those who were planning VE Day parties back home after the BBC interrupted their schedule with a newsflash declaring the following day VE Day - and that it would be a national holiday.

For some their memories are of wooden tables and benches adorned with Union bunting hastily erected in the streets; a street party tea, with junket – a milk-based ‘jelly’ pudding - and blancmange, with evaporated milk as cream and perhaps even a few chocolates. A considerable feast in those days of rationing.

But others, service personnel like Lt. Launa Mary Stevenson, have quite different memories.

“They desperately needed nurses in the field hospital as part of D Day. I didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes’, I said, yes.”

Because Launa, Exmouth served as assistant surgeon in a number of field hospitals in France, Belgium and Holland, where she witnessed the reality and brutality of war.

It was February 21, 1944 and Launa, a 23-year-old nurse, was working a shift. She had trained at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. She had a strong faith and fully expected to take holy orders and become a nun. Then she was approached by a hospital chaplain, who offered her a chance to work in a leper mission in North Africa.

While she was waiting for safe passage to make that journey, she was called into the office by her matron for a meeting that would change the course of not only her life, but the lives of the countless others she would go on to save.

“She was a recruiting officer for the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS also called QAs),” recalls Launa.

“They desperately needed nurses in the field hospital as part of D Day. I didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes’, I said, yes.”

After a few short months, and postings to Catterick and the New Forest, Launa boarded a Royal Marine landing craft and in the dead of night they landed on Gold Beach.

She recalls spending her first night in France – memorable, not only because she slept in a hedge, but because of the sound of gunfire and the intermittent roar of a Messerschmitt 109 flying overhead.

“I learned quickly because one shot at me – it went through the metal plate that was holding my stew. I lost my stew and there was quite a hole in the plate.”

When their first field hospital was set up near Bayeux, a Royal Marine warned Launa and her fellow QAs not to drink or bathe in the water of a local stream for fear of snipers lurking in the cover of a nearby copse of trees.

She said: “I learned quickly because one shot at me – it went through the metal plate that was holding my stew. I lost my stew and there was quite a hole in the plate.”

Allied soldiers returned fire and Launa soon discovered it was these very snipers who were to be her next patients.

It turned out that it was the cover of the trees they were using that had caused the injuries - the bullets had hit the trees and the resulting splinters of bark and wood tore at the snipers.

Launa said: “I still have a little smile when I think back, I had to treat them for their wounds when they were the ones who had tried to kill me.”

“It was days and nights of the injured coming in and going out, it felt as though it would never stop."

For almost a year, from D-Day on June 6, 1944, through to Germany’s surrender the following May, Launa worked in field hospitals across France, Belgium and Holland, moving as the Allied advance pressed on.

She said: “It was days and nights of the injured coming in and going out, it felt as though it would never stop. English soldiers, Canadians, Americans, death’s-head (Waffen SS), innocents, children; together with my lovely surgeon we tried to help them all and we did what we could.”

On one occasion she completed a full theatre with a Canadian surgeon until both collapsed on the floor with exhaustion. They stayed there, paralysed from fatigue, unable to move as the next shift came in.

“There was one very young boy. It really broke my heart. He was a beautiful boy, a beautiful boy. I cry thinking of him now.

“His eyes were injured. Shrapnel you see. He had come in before and we tried to treat them, but of course it didn’t work, they didn’t improve so he came in again.

“What could we do? To save his life, to prevent infection we had no choice. My heart breaks when I remember him coming out of theatre.

“We had to take his eyesight.”

Launa’s kindness and compassion shines through, she held the hand of a young German soldier who had sustained severe injuries from shrapnel across his chest and neck.

“There was no saving him, his wounds were too great,” she said.

“He was calling for his mother. ‘Mutti, mutti, (mummy) he kept saying. I just held his hand. Something I said seemed to give him comfort, and I just stroked his head, and whispered gently ‘schlafen… schlafen…’ (sleep) like this and I said I would stay with him. He passed away.”

One injured Wehrmacht serviceman was convinced that Allied soldiers intended to kill him in the field hospital when Launa wasn’t looking.

“I spoke to the officer and told him that I knew all about it and that this wouldn’t do. The German chap was so grateful I intervened he pressed his Iron Cross into my hand.

“I didn’t want to take it, but he insisted. I still have it. It has the same mud on it as the day it was given to me.”

“It was terrible; we operated on a number of them. These were young men and women in their 20s and they looked as though they were in their 80s; they were skeletal, just bones.” 

Not all of the injured were soldiers and when the British and Canadian troops liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, they saw first-hand evidence of the Holocaust, thousands of emaciated, hungry, sick and brutalised prisoners.

Launa recalled: “I wanted to go in and help but the Colonel said ‘no, no you can’t go in there’.

“It was terrible; we operated on a number of them. These were young men and women in their 20s and they looked as though they were in their 80s; they were skeletal, just bones.” 

When VE Day came Launa says she was barely aware - she says that the trajectory of the war had slowly been turning against Germany for some time.

“I didn’t feel like celebrating. It was a relief of course that the war in Europe was over, and Germany had surrendered, but I was so tired, and I was just waiting to be reassigned.

“I had seen so much death and horror I was just numb. So much of it I had to block out of my mind.”

She didn’t have long to wait when she heard that she was being reassigned to one of the southern Japanese islands to support the Allied manoeuvres in the Pacific.

“It was all very secret. I was driven to a safe house and told by MI6 not to talk to anybody, which is difficult because I really like talking.

“We waited and waited, for weeks. And then we were told it was off. Why I asked?

“The bomb I was told. The bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima.”

Launa went on to have a family and lives in Exmouth, the place of her birth.

Councillor John Hart, chairman of Devon County Council thanked the wartime generation and said: “Please remember our past at the same time as looking forward to our future. It’s very young people today that we have to think about, our children and grandchildren and the future for them has to be a good future.”