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I was 19 when the war broke out, and I volunteered as an ambulance driver in 1939. Not many working class girls could drive then, but my father was an engineer and had taught me.

I did my training, and was called up as a Civil Defence Driver when war broke out.

I was based in Cambridge, but spent some time in Norwich when it was blitzed. We had to help evacuate the hospital during the night. I remember getting to the outskirts of Norwich, we were met by a man with a hurricane light, and we had to follow him through the bomb craters to our HQ.

One dawn we were standing by our ambulances, and saw all the ruins. I wondered what the milkman would do when he came round with the milk.

We were involved in meeting hospital trains and escorted the wounded to hospital. We also met wounded prisoners, who went to the exam hall in Downing Street, Cambridge.

Some of us were transferred to Essex before D-Day, and we worked there. I think we were near Tilbury docks. We had all the V1 and V2 rockets to deal with.

Cambridge had apparently been circled on maps by Hitler who apparently didn't want it bombed, but some stray bombs did fall on the way back. One fell on Vicarage Terrace quite early in the war. I think the plane might have been hit, and just dropped the bombs to get away. About 17 were killed.

I remember a German bomber came down on Histon Road. The crew had baled out over Newmarket, and left the plane which hit three houses. When we got there, the injured had already been evacuated, but two old ladies were unaccounted for. As I was only about a hundred yards form home, I popped home to get some tea to keep warm. I woke my parents up who were furious I had woken them - little did they know what they had escaped.

The Americans had there own arrangements, so we didn't have to deal with any of them. They used Wimpole Hall as a hospital.

I do remember once when we had to cope with a hospital train one night at Barnwell Junction. When we got there, there was a terrible smell. We found out that they were from Anzio. We heard that the dressings hadn't been changed, and that was what the smell was. I later heard from a woman who had been to see her husband in hospital after this, and she had been kept waiting while he was cleaned up.

We had a Canadian lady whose husband was a POW. She was our boss, and had parcels sent from Canada. They contained cigarettes which she used to take to the prisoners when we picked them up.

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