大象传媒

I was 18 when the war was declared and working at W.D.I.H.O Wills cigar factory. For a while things were reasonably quiet regarding air raids. On November 24th 1940 I was at my boyfriend's house when the sirens went. We went out into the garden and saw all the flares coming down. We quickly went into the shelter. The noise of the bombs was terrible. When the all clear went my boyfriend took me home. When we got to the top of the hill where I lived we couldn鈥檛 believe our eyes. The whole town was on fire. It was a dreadful sight and there were a lot of casualties. From then on my parents thought it may be safer to sleep in a room downstairs. I slept on a mattress under the stairs.

When I had my calling-up papers at 19, I decided to do nursing I was sent to Winford Orthopaedic hospital, which was part military and part civilian. It was hard work, but rewarding when you saw the patients discharged looking much better then when they came in. I had one day off a week and when I went home I would go to the local greengrocer to see if I could get some root vegetables which were in very short supply. Sometimes I was able to get some swede turnip and a couple of carrots. My mother was then able to make a stew with a bit of meat from the rationing, that would hopefully last for a couple of days. Another bad air raid was on Good Friday April 11th. A lot of houses were destroyed; part of the roof of our house was damaged. There were a lot of casualties and fires. I carried on working at Winford until the end of the war.

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