大象传媒

I joined the volunteer ambulance service as part of the civil defence effort. I was only sixteen, in fact I joined on my sixteenth birthday. I thought it would be a bit glamourous though I changed my mind after gas training. Bedford hadn't been hit too bad but we would often see the flashes of incendiary bombs and would scurry as fast as my old bike would go from my house in Wendover Drive to the ambulance stationat Barkers Lane at the sound of the siren. I remember our campbeds and the awful scratchyblankets we were issued. Mr Gooding would always make the night staff their bed time cocoa and early morning tea. I remember when Albert Street was bombed there was so much chaos when we arrived and my drive fred Horsley who was very protective of me I was about the same age as his daughter. He made me stay in the van while he helped deal with the bodies of the bomb victims.
In the aftermath people would go back to their bomb damaged homes and something that still brings a smile to my face is to remember how peoplewould still lock and check their doors even though many of their windows would have been blown out and like the rest of us probably had little worth stealing.

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