大象传媒

When I was eighteen I joined the Shropshire Red Cross and went to St. Dunston's. We'd been evacuated to Church Stretton to the Long Mynd Hotel to an annexe, Tiger Hall, I was in the annexe which was the hospital and we had the injured servicemen who had trouble with their sight, probabley blinded, in there. Some had even lost limbs. Later, they moved the hospital down to Stoke Mandeville at Aylsbury; and I spent the rest of the wartime down there, looking after the blinded servicemen.

When I was at Church Stretton we use to take some of the men on tandem bicycles I used to be on the front and the blind servicemen on the rear doing the hard work. We used to cycle down to Craven Arms from Church Stretton, which is where I lived, and mother used to have tea ready, so then we had tea and we cycled back to Church Stretton.

We went down to Aylsbury to Stoke Mandeville. We went down by train, the nurses and the patients. Then I remember V.E.Day, down in Aylsbury, a lot of celebrations.

We used to have the Doodlebugs that used to come over. We didn't have actually any raids there, but, I used to go up to London sometimes, on my time off, and I remember coming down onto the underground and seeing all the people down there, in the stations. They sort of had bunks, they
used to come down in the evening and stay there. I don't think they had any bombs in Aylsbury.

Q: Of what state of mind were the servicemen in? Some of them would be depressed, but on the whole it amazing how they coped with it all. We had some that had lost their sight and lost limbs as well, that was really, really hard. They had a Professor [MacIntyre?] who did wonderful work really; skin grafting and all that you know:and he founded the Guinea Pig Club.

Q: By modern standards, were conditions quite primitive? Oh yes! but hospitals were very clean, didn't have these problems they are having today. In fact they had almost to lie to attention in bed when there was anybody coming round to visit.

Q: Matron ruled? Yes! she did, in those days.

Q: Was ther comradery? Yes, that was very good: and they would all have a joke. The hours were quite long really,you had to do night duty, you had to make the dressings,
put all those ready and put them into drums, sterilized. I enjoyed it, it was a great experience.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by M.J.Greene of the B.B.C. Radio Shropshire CSV Action desk on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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