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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Three Counties Action on behalf of Sylvia Wharton and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was 13 years old. I had prayed and prayed for there to be no war but God had let me down. This Sunday morning the voice of Mr. Chamberlain told us on the wireless that we were now at war with Germany. It was 3rd September 1939. I was very sad, disappointed, ad worried. What was going to happen to us? I was afraid but life went on. I went to school. We had evacuee children at Sedgefield School. We only had the odd air raid. But my heroine was my mother. Dad was too old to be conscripted — I was too young. Mum, Florence Gibson, became a volunteer Red Cross Nurse at Winterton Emergency Hospital, Sedgefield, Co. Durham — no ordinary job. The night the train from Douet arrived she told me how a lot of soldiers arrived with tourniquets in place which had origin — ally been applied in France. A night of ghastly nursing and operations.

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