大象传媒

I was a V.A.D.
I was at a military camp in WESTON super MARE on that doomed
morning we 4000+ soldiers struck camp at 4am and journeyed back to Shropshire. Night duty at Ashford which catered for the overflow of Birmingham hospitals. I learned to listen to human stories . From the hospital terrace we could see the fires of Coventry. I remember a bomb being dropped behind St Lawrences church Ludlow. No casualties.
Autumn 1940 I went to St.Mary's TEACHER TRAINING College. Thousands of troops came. We were evacuated to Llandrindod Wells for some months. Back to Cheltenham food shortage but we remained healthy. Morning bun prices soared half penny to a penny to two pennies too expensive. My 5 shillings a week pocket money had to buy stationary etc and I saved for Saturday tea and the pictures.
One evening a few of us played volley ball with a team of soldiers in the swimming bath. The military won! Then when I came to cycle( on a sit up and beg) back to college my bike was missing. Later retrieved at the cost of a shilling in the police charity box!
A soldier had borrowed it to get back to camp and abandoned it in a ditch. During a raid, huddled against a basement wall;I looked apprehensively at the huge central heating pipes and prayed not to have a watery grave. Back in Ludlow late 1942 I had a teaching post at Ludlow senior school sharing with a Liverpool school-taking boys football and starting at 11am when there had been an air raid.

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