Oral History Gallery

Structure and training at sea 7- Training for Gulf War

Julia Massey

Service: 1968 - 1996

Rate: Captain

Julia joined the QARNNS (Queen Alexandra Royal Naval Nursing Service) in 1968 and worked at Royal Naval Hospital Haslar, a number of medical facilities in Malta, RNH Plymouth, HMS Pembroke and RNH Hong Kong. In 1982, she was part of the nursing team embarked on SS Uganda for the Falklands War and during the Gulf War she was responsible for allocating nurses to RFA Argus. In 1994 she was involved with the Defence Cost Studies Report which led to the closure of the RN Hospitals, the establishment of tri-service training and the reduction of the QARNNS by nearly a half.

Find out about the training QARNNS nurses recieved prior to the Gulf War and how this changed following the conflict.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Extract Text (Duration 1.55)

The main thing was that really the QARNNS nurses especially did need to exercise in the ship because they were in this RFA ship and life was not very comfortable for them. They had to do whole ship's duties as part of the running of the ship and do some sort of deck watches for mines and things, and so it became very obvious that it was very important that they were allowed to exercise and have periods at sea in the Argus in... in peace time, and that in fact happened. The other thing we had to get organised at short notice for them to go into the Argus was to get them ordering sea survival courses which are something that QARNNS nurses had not done beforehand. I mean luckily HMS Excellent got them all through the course but that is... that had to be done at short notice. So that sort of thing is all... is done now for all QARNNS nurses so that they are far more readily equipped to go to sea in a conflict at short notice. When I first joined the Navy very little was really ever mentioned to me about my war role, I think people did not imagine that any conflict would happen, and then the Falklands came along, which legally we were fine because we were in a hospital ship, and then of course suddenly the Gulf appeared.