I had been a nurse for three years when I first encountered a veteran.

I started my nursing career at Vancouver General Hospital in 1981. After a year of working in orthopaedics and urology, we experienced some staffing cutbacks. I learned there was one vacant position at Shaughnessy Hospital, which provided rehabilitation and acute and extended care for veterans. It had a bad rotation, and no one wanted it, but it was full-time, so I took it.

I had six deaths in my first six days at Shaughnessy. The tears started. I told a co-worker I didn’t think I could do this. She told me I was an excellent nurse, but too soft-hearted. She told me to build a wall. So I built an invisible wall around my heart. My family went through the wall, but my patients went up to the wall, which contained lots of love and compassion for them. I ended up nursing for 30 years, of which eight were medical/surgical and 22 were with the veterans. I loved working in a surgical unit but found my true calling with the veterans.

My first veteran patient was a gentleman named Paddy. He came to us non-responsive in an alcoholic coma. He was like this for a month. Every day I would tell him about the weather and the news, tell him jokes, and say I hoped he would wake up. One day, two of my co-workers heard me and laughed, saying that he couldn’t talk or hear and that I should stop the silly nonsense. I told them in our training we were told that hearing was the last sense to go. I continued talking to Paddy.

Unbeknown to me, on one of my days off, Paddy awoke. He wanted to see the nurse whose voice was engraved on his brain. They told him I was off, coming back to work in two days. He told them not to tell me he was awake.

When I returned two days later and asked about Paddy, they said there were no changes. On my rounds, I entered his room and saw him lying on the bed, eyes still closed, breathing regular. I checked the men in Beds 1, 2, and 3. Then I turned again to Paddy, in Bed 4. Someone had dressed him up in pants and a shirt and he was shaved. So I said: “Wow, Paddy, someone has dressed you so nicely in pants and a shirt and even shaved you.” I told him I would go and come right back to make sure he was comfortable.

I started to walk away only to hear him shouting: “Come back!”

I turned around saw him sitting up in the bed. I yelled: “Oh God, you’re awake! I have to go tell someone!”

That’s when he told me he had wanted to surprise me. We both laughed and hugged each other. He told me he heard everything and wanted so badly to get out of the coma to see me. I hugged him again and we laughed together. I have never forgotten Paddy.

Eight years later, I was bumped by staff changes again, this time to a different ward in Shaughnessy Hospital. If I remember correctly, we had 54 veterans on board, of whom 24 were on an open ward. This was a little different from medical/surgical units.

The veterans had varying degrees of shell shock from the war, plus they had medical/surgical needs and suffered from alcoholism. They needed a lot of understanding for what they had gone through and their symptoms, as well as tons of loving care and medical or surgical care.

Leslie Madunic’s nursing certificate from 1981.

One day I had just walked out of the nursing station, was standing at the door. I saw Don coming down the hall towards me. He had been having a lot of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and would sit on his bed, rocking, holding his head, and saying: “It’s going to blow.” His meds were being adjusted. He came up to me and grabbed me by the throat with both hands.

My first thoughts were that I was either going to die or would be paralyzed from the neck down. All the staff stood still, and the supervisor had her finger to her mouth, in a shush symbol to staff. I looked up at Don and said: “Hello, Don.”

He looked down at me, said, “Hello, Sweetheart,” and his hands dropped.

Another day a veteran came up to the ward clerk. It was the month of August, he told her, and he was going to the CNE. She corrected him: “You mean the PNE” – the Pacific National Exhibition.

He said, “No, it is CNE.” He had a limp and used a walker. She saw him walk away but forgot to inform the staff. By lunch time we were looking for him.

The ward clerk told us the story and about his insistence it is called the CNE. I said Toronto has the CNE, Canadian National Exhibition. We called the supervisor, who called the police, Greyhound bus system, and airlines. Yes, it turned out he was safely on a bus headed to Toronto and refusing to come back. Luckily, he had some family and friends there. His belongings were sent to Toronto.

Frequently the men on the ward would become intoxicated. Alcohol was always a problem on B2, as the men would go out to buy it, and then drink it or hide it. One day I saw a resident from another ward carrying a brown paper bag, going in and out of a few rooms. When questioned by staff, he had nothing. We nicknamed him “Rum Runner.”

Now we had a bigger problem. We started the “alcohol searches” on the ward. We would wait until the men left their rooms, going for movies, crafts, or meals, and then we checked their boots, shoes, clothing, closets, and even under mattresses. We continued to watch what rooms they went in and out of. One day we saw a small piece of string sticking out the back of the toilet water tank. We lifted the lid, and yes, a bottle of rye was being chilled in there.

Another time we thought we knew every place, only to have the head nurse come in the back door by the hospital loading dock. There she saw something shining on the hospital outside wall. Getting closer, she saw a bottle of alcohol, hanging on a rope two stories up – our ward. She counted the windows outside to find the room. It hung from a nail in the outside window frame. All the alcohol would be collected, names written on the bottles, and given to recreation for the pub night. There they were allowed two drinks.

One day I walked into Bill’s room and I could see he was agitated and pacing about. Just as I turned to face him, he said: “I am in the army. I could kill you in two seconds flat.” He held up two fingers and then sat on the bed.

I sat beside him and held his hand, asking what was wrong. He said: “I can’t get it out of my head. I lay down, I try to sleep, and I can’t get it out of my head.”

“What is it, Bill?”

“I see an eye over here, a head over there, arm and leg there, guts everywhere.”

I told him we would talk to the doctor to get him some help. It was sad that there was not much we could do for him. You can’t overmedicate.

Leslie Madunic prays for war vets and her late husband at Gardens of Gethsemani cemetery in Surrey.

We had Father G. McKinnon in Shaughnessy, covering for Father Campbell when he got ill. I remember Father McKinnon wearing runners and running from ward to ward some nights anointing the sick. He wanted to spend his days with the veterans, as he was with them overseas in World War II. He was greatly liked and loved by all.

The men would not often speak about their time in the war. Sometimes among themselves you could hear them saying: “I was RCAF and flew the Lancaster bomber,” or “I flew the Spitfire.”

In 1991–1992 the federal Liberal government started some cutbacks with veterans, namely military uniforms. The vets were told there would no longer be individual uniforms for the military forces, but that the Army, Navy, and Royal Canadian Air Force would all have the same tan uniform. No further distinguishing differences would be available as they cost too much money. Many veterans were upset: some cried, some were mad. They were elderly, but they were vets and wanted their uniforms to stay the same. Some of us medical staff encouraged them to fight back, to take it to the newspaper or to the television people.

Sure enough, some of the veterans at the George Derby Veteran Facility in Burnaby (where I worked at the time) were interviewed in the news. In the end, they won! They were very pleased.

We later started having female veterans coming into Derby. This was very nice. Then some husbands and wives came in too. They were in double rooms. A lot of programs in house started for the veterans: bingo, arts and crafts, movie nights, and pub nights two times a week. We stopped doing alcohol checks. A band would come play live music once in a while. There were Easter and Christmas parties, and bus trips twice a week.

Remembrance Day was a very sad time for the veterans. Some kept to themselves in their rooms, only coming out for a meal. The meal request was always chili with beans at lunch, as a tribute to the comrades lost in the trenches. This was their special bond with them. The town hall was always packed with veterans, family, and friends on Remembrance Day. The service was always beautiful.

My 22 years with the veterans was a mixture of laughter, joy, sorrow, and tears. They became my extended family. I enjoyed my time with all of them immensely. Although I have forgotten some of their names, they all left an imprint on my life.

Leslie Madunic is a retired nurse and a member of St. Helen’s Parish. She is also a regular visitor at Gardens of Gethsemani, where she prays for veterans and for her late husband.