大象传媒

This story is submitted to the site by Pat Yates of Age Concern, Shropshire on behalf of Myfanwy Mottram,and with her full permission. She understands the site's terms & conditions.

At the start of the war I was a clerk in the Army Pay Corps and based in Shrewsbury. In 1940 the plan was that the Pay Corps would go over to France. We had our inoculations which were so painful we had to wear a red ribbon round our arm as a warning so that nobody bumped into us! But then came Dunkirk and we had to stay in Shrewsbury, where my job was making out payslips for war widows. The widows' slips were green and what sticks in my mind is the awful sadness of making out green slips for the wives of 500 men of the Leicestershire Regiment killed in the retreat.
At that time I was in digs close by where the Shirehall is now. I wasn't well and had to attend the local medical centre. I had lost a whole stone in one week and was found to have T.B. so was invalided out, and that was the end of my active war work.

My husband, Denis Mottram, was in a reserved occupation. Although he wanted to join up he was not allowed to because his skills were in demand. He was a dental technician specialising in making frames for facial reconstruction and working in RAF Cranwell with men who had been shot down. Later in the war he was transferred to work at Cosford.
At the beginning of the war St. Dunstan's moved from Newhaven on the south coast to Shropshire and were based at the Long Mynd hotel in Church Stretton with offices at Denehurst, a private house on Sandford Avenue. I was there on the day that Sir Ian Fraser and the Princess Royal came to visit the St. Dunstan's people. My husband's job meant he had a lot to do with St. Dunstan's and when I was recovering from T.B. I used to walk up The Burway to Devil's Elbow for exercise and took blind people along with me.
One of the men I got to know and went walking with was David Bell, who married a local girl, Sybil Page. She was a lovely girl with beautiful red curly hair. One night, I can't remember why, I had to share a room with her and I remember waking up in the morning and looking at her asleep and thinking how sad it was that David would never be able to see how pretty she was.

David was a clever man and taught himself several languages. Not only was he blind but he also had artificial hands, and was still able to play the trombone. He and Sybil had two children, a boy and a girl, and David travelled all over the world lecturing about St. Dunstan's. We kept in touch through the years and he and Sybil went over to visit my sister in Ottowa because they were great friends. He was a lovely person.
I have always stayed interested in St. Dunstan's and the friends and events of the war years, attending reunions and anniversaries. For the 50th anniversary of the end of the war at Denehurst I went dressed as Marlene Dietrich and sang "Falling in love again"! It's my party piece and although I'm now aged 94, I can still give them a turn.

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