大象传媒

This story as submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Nick Chamberlain from Age Concern Sevenoaks and District has been added to the website on behalf of Joan Quirk with her permission and they fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

In 1942 I was about 21 years old and working in a London hospital as an Almoner which was the equivalent of a present-day social worker. Part of our work was to find out how much patients could pay for their treatment as of course at that time there was no National Health Service. We worked in the basement of St Thomas鈥檚 Hospital where all the windows had been blocked up as it had been almost totally bombed. The patients were interviewed and if they needed in-patient treatment they were then sent down by bus to our sector hospital near Godalming which had formerly been an old Tuberculosis sanatorium. A good part of my job was to make sure that the children of in-patients had someone to look after them as many of the husbands were in the forces. Letters to relations in the forces was another job that we sometimes helped with.

At the time I was living in Purley which had been quite badly bombed due to its closeness to Croydon airport, a prime target for the Germans. My house was near an anti-aircraft post and many times whilst walking home after work I could hear the shrapnel coming through the trees.

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