THE PERSIAN GULF: Fourteen months ago, Leading Naval Nurse Lucy Norman was a trainee working shifts in Haslar hospital in Portsmouth, England, and dreaming about emulating her heroine, Florence Nightingale.
Now she finds herself in the casualty ward of HMS Argus, the British hospital ship in the Persian Gulf that is readying itself for an influx of British and American casualties and Iraqi prisoners of war should war begin against Iraq.
"Sometimes I do become worried about the job in hand," said the 23-year-old from Dorset who is entering a combat zone for the first time. "I've never seen a gunshot wound before. But we've been trained to deal with trauma and when I work I try not to think how the injuries occurred. It's the wrong job to be squeamish in," she said.
Nurse Norman is one of staff of 240 medical workers - including 40 doctors, psychiatrists and a dentist - on board the 28,000 tonne ship that has been working as a floating hospital since the First Gulf War.
With four decks of wards and 100 beds, it is, in the words of one marine, on a visit to cure his toothache, "one hell of a lot better than the NHS. I'm already planning out my first minor injury." But for Nurse Norman and the staff who patrolled the ship's wards for the past three weeks since arriving in the Gulf, much of that time spent working six-hour shifts in a heightened state of readiness, there is a dilemma as they wait for war to begin.
"Of course we want to begin work soon, but on the other hand no one actually wants to see a casualty brought here by war. If I went home without treating anything more serious than a grazed knee I would think of that as a good result," she said.
In the ship's pathology unit, the lab technicians measured out the cost of what a war against Iraq would mean in stark terms.
"We currently have 10 pints of blood for transfusions," said Andy Redding, in charge of the lab. "When war begins we expect to have hundreds of pints. Those are grim figures to contemplate and that's why we focus on the job in hand and try and get a little time to relax before the storm begins."
To do so, the crew has a gym, a collection of DVDs and a sweepstake organised around how many days it will be before the ship returns to its base in Portsmouth: on offer any number up to 100. "I haven't bet yet because there's just no knowing when we'll get to go home," said Redding wistfully. "Tony Blair has marched us up to the top of the hill but there's no knowing when we'll come down again.'