大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Jake and Kayleigh, pupils from Teversham Primary School on behalf of May Russell and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

From Addenbrookes Hospital we took a train to London. We went down from a station in London to Avonmouth. From there we caught a hospital ship called the Oxfordshire. That night there was an air raid. We all had to jump out of bed and put on our tin hats. We spent that night in the docks. Hospital ships were different because they left their lights on to show that all the sick people were on board. The next morning we went off on our travels.
We were allowed on the shore in the day but not in the night because of Italian submarines in the port. Then we went to Algiers - it had beautiful white houses, but it smelt awful. There we lived in little seaside chalets. Then we went by train to Guelma where we set up a hospital. We had very strange toilets which were just a hole in a plank of wood with canvas round the outside. A battle was going on for Tunis, so there were a lot of people to look after. Lizards, frogs and turtles crept into our tent and my friends made me put them out.
We moved again but this time we were partly in a school and partly in tents. My friend and I went to live with a French family. We had another move into tents to another part of the country and then into Italy. After that we went to Greece where we lived and worked in a school. We had a good time when the hospital got cut off from the town. No one came in and no one came out apart from a few soldiers going to fetch water in cans. The water in the cans lasted a long time. When the Eleas had been defeated and we could go out I met my husband. He was a Spitfire pilot and we got married in the Chapel of the school which we used as a hospital. Now here we are 60 years later.

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