大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries on behalf of Brenda Heath and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was a nurse during the war. D-Day - I was on duty in one of the soldiers wards. We had had to come back on duty at midnight when they started bringing in all of the wounded. I remember that lots of them had bits of parachute with them and we made ourselves headscarves out of them - bright yellow headscarves!
We weren't supposed to tell the aprents that the soldiers were home. One chap said to me "Whatever you do don't tell my mum what has happened to me". I wondered why. His parents came to the ward door and I saw his dad. The soldier had last his arm and his dad had lost the same arm in World War One.

At one time we had a ward full of German PoWs. The Pioneer Corp were guarding the ward. The Germands were all very young. It was Christmas Eve and they sang Silent Night in German - there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

Whilst nursing I met my future husband. His mum was a patient of mine at the City General and she asked i f one of us nurses would write to her son, Albert, who was in teh Western Desert. We tossed a coin on the ward for who would write to him and I won. We started writing to each other regularly during which time his mum passed away. Albert made me his next of kin.
In 1944 he came home on leave from Italy. We met outside the hsopital gates and got engaged at Christmas, married in February and our son, Paul was born in December!
After the war Paul and I were due to go out to Nairobi to be with Albert. We were all packed and ready to go - I was really excited I'd only been as far as Rhyl before. The Mau-Mau stpooed us going.
When Albert was away I always talked to the moon and imagined that he could hear me.

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