大象传媒

Matron's name was
Stone and she used to tell everybody that she was Stone by name and Stone by
nature and during the whole time that I was there, she never ever smiled at
anyone, she kept a straight, severe face at all times. The day the War
ended people in the Hospital were so excited but suddenly every now and then
you would come across someone who was having a cry, remembering some of the
people in the War who were not with us anymore. Lots of people were both sad
but also very excited and pleased to thank God it was all over. During
dinner that night, this person walked into the dining room with a great big
beaming smile. I suddenly realised that she was wearing Matron's uniform and
it was Matron and she said to us, "If you would like to go to London tonight
and join in the celebrations, you may but you have to be back on duty
tomorrow morning at 7.30am and not one minute later". We couldn't get out
of that dining room fast enough. We went upstairs, changed and ran to the
station and got the train to King's Cross. When we got there, the crowds
were enormous. We pushed and shoved and made our way down to Buckingham
Palace and with everyone else shouted for the King, although we didn't get
really very close to the Palace. We did get to the quadrant in front. Richenda -"Did the King come on the balcony?" Olive - He came out about every quarter of an hour, poor man. We reckoned if
he was having his dinner, he must have had a mouthful of meat and gone back
again and then come out with a mouthful of potatoes - the Queen and the two
Princesses came out as well. The first time we shouted the Princesses
weren't there but the second time somebody said oh! they've come out -and
they were standing near the gates shouting for the King. We weren't close
enough to see them but learned from the paper the next day that the two
Princesses had indeed come out and were also shouting for the King. We saw
him come out about three times I suppose. After that we went up to Trafalgar
Square and then onto Leicester Square and one of the nurses said, "Come on,
let's do something. Look at all these soldiers standing around all on their
own." Whether they had mislaid their friends or were genuinely on their
own, we didn't know but anyway we decided we would do something every time
we saw someone on their own. We would go up and surround them and say,
"Right, sing, dance or stand on your head", and of course some said "Oh, I
can't dance but I can sing" and they would try and sing. "Oh that was
dreadful. Hold your money, that's it- up you go - stand on your head" and
we would stand them upside down on the pavement. Others joined us and by the
time we got to Piccadilly there were about 28 of us in this group - there
were the 8 nurses from the hospital and the rest were soldiers, sailors and
airmen in uniform and we were going along as a group quite happy. Every
time we saw anyone alone we would say and do the same thing all over again.

When we got into Piccadilly, it was about 11o'clock and who did we see but
two of the nuns who had been in our training school. We went up to them and
said, "What are you doing here? You should be on your knees thanking God
for stopping the War". They said that they had have been all day and Mother
Superior had said that they could come out for a while and join in the
celebrations but be back by 12o'clock in the Convent which was near the
park. We let them go and then decided that perhaps we ought to be making our
way back to King's Cross, so we had to push our way through the throng.
Everybody was going completely mad, people were doing the daftest things
that you would never ever dream of doing in normal life. We got back to
King's Cross station and got the milk train back to Enfield and got into the
hospital just after 4o'clock in the morning. It wasn't worth going to bed.
When we got on duty half past 7, the men patients asked "Where did to go,
what did you do, tell us" and so we told them the things that we had done.
One of them said, "Are you going out again tonight" and we said no as there
was no money left. We only got paid 拢3 a month - it didn't go very far.
They said you should go up again and I said no - we're tired. They said,
"Oh you can't be tired when the War is over" and when we got back from
having our lunch, the men were holding an auction in the ward and were
selling stamps and soap and one man shouted, "I'll empty everybody's urine
bottle for a penny a time". So they got all this money together and said
"Right that's it, we've got enough money, you can go up to London tonight.
There's your fare and we have got you enough money to have an ice cream in
the American Ice Cream parlour in Leicester Square." One thing you could
never fault was American ice cream which was like what we have now - firm.
Before the War, ice-cream was what they called Italian ice cream - it was
white and like very thick custard and melted everywhere but the American ice
cream was firm and solid when you cut it up. So we said thank you very much
and went up to London again, did the same trip and raced around and went
into the Ice Cream parlour in Leicester Square where we had an ice cream -
oh it was lovely - with cream and fresh fruit and on top sprinkled grated
chocolate - it was fantastic. We thought it was one of the best things we
had ever tasted and then we got back to the hospital at around 4o'clock.
When we had our two hours off later in the day, we all went to sleep in the
sitting room and someone came and woke us up when it was time to go back on
duty.

On the Friday, it was my 21st birthday and the doctors kept coming up to me
and saying, "Jolly good,happy birthday" On the Saturday, I had an evening
off, so I went home and when I got home found Mum and Dad had made some sort
of a party with my cousins and friends - and later we were all outside
singing and laughing and suddenly someone said "hey look at that". We
looked up and coming down the road were about 40 airmen, all on bicycles,
cycling down the road. When they got to the house, they came inside and
brought a great big box with them and said that they had got some
fireworks. Whatever it was they were not ordinary civilian fireworks - it
must have been something from the air field because when they let some of
them off, they were the biggest bangs ever heard and went shooting up into
the sky.It was like World War III had broken out. The men were in charge
because the men had to look after the fireworks, the girls couldn't do a
thing like that, so we were standing about in the street when someone
knocked a candle over into the fireworks and you have never seen anything
like it - there were fireworks shooting up the road and going up in the sky
and everybody was running like mad up the street to get away from whatever
these fireworks were. At the end - after about 5 minutes - there were 60 or
70 people all out of breath as they had been racing like mad. Fortunately
nobody was hurt but it was a completely utterly mad thing - What a birthday!

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