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My Memories of WW2 — by Beti Howe (nee Price, formerly Poynton) 26 Packington Ave, Allesley, Coventry CV5 9GZ - Contact Sue Wareham, 024 76306894 (daughter)

I left my home in South Wales at the age of 16 and went to Manchester to do my preliminary nurse training. I was eighteen when the war broke out and I moved to Coventry to be closer to my Aunt who was a companion to a lady Opthalmic Consultant at Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital where I started my general nurse training.

As I started at Coventry and Warwickshire hospital in September 1939, contingency plans had been drawn up to deal with casualties from any air raids which might take place and we were schooled in handling these — no could imagine the scale of the injuries which we were to be confronted with nor the massive bombardment which was to take place. We were to take it in turns to work a night shift and rest during the day if possible and patients were to be taken from their beds and moved to what were deemed to be safer areas.

During the night of the November 1940 blitz, a brilliant moonlit night, the hospital showed up clearly as a white painted building and provided a perfect target for enemy bombers who came over in waves. Despite that we lost very few patients or staff that night, but casualities were coming in from all over the city. I particularly remember the ambulance drivers who did such a magnificent job bringing in the injured, but as we filled up, they had to fulfull another task, moving those who could be moved out of the city to safer places.

All night we could see the city burning and by morning we breathed a sigh of relief that our number had not been up, but we were all shattered, we had worked hard all night and the operating theatres had been in use continuously since the morning before.

I was working on the eye ward at that time which was away from the main hospital and at one point we had to walk patients recovering from surgery into other parts of the hospital. The instruments which we used in that department were costly and the sister was justifiably proud to see them glistening in their glass cabinets ready for use. On the day after the November blitz she took me with her to see the damage. We were devastated to see all our beautiful instruments scattered on the floor amid the broken glass of their cabinets. Sister, a stoic and unemotional person was moved to tears.

The following day we were taken to Warwick as there was nowhere for us to stay and we were sent to a private home where we were told there was a bed for us. We were filthy and we asked for a bath, only to be told that we couldn’t have a bath until the owner knew who was paying for it! We didn’t last long there, after a couple of days we hitched a lift back to Coventry on a lorry.
The following day we were taken to Warwick as there was nowhere for us to stay and we were sent to a private home where we were told there was a bed for us. We were filthy and we asked for a bath, only to be told that we couldn’t have a bath until the owner knew who was paying for it! We didn’t last long there, after a couple of days we hitched a lift back to Coventry on a lorry.

When we arrived back in Coventry everything was chaotic and my friend Dorothy and myself decided we would return to our homes in South Wales. We borrowed money from our relatives and spent the next few weeks with our families who where delighted to see us safe and well. We then recceived a letter from Matron telling us that we should return to complete our training which we did and I returned without Dorothy in time for that Christmas which I spent on night duty.

During the air raids it was nothing to come across an incendiary bomb which had fallen through the ceiling and we were taught by the fire brigade how to put these out. On one occasion, during one of the air raids, while walking down a corridor with a senior nurse one of these fell through a glass roof in front of us, it was one hand to the pump and one to the hose, just as we had been instructed.

Following the November blitz there was a lull in the bombing and we were perhaps becoming a little complacent until the dreadful night of April 8th 1941, two days before my 20th birthday.

Again a moonlit night and I was in the bath when the sirens went off. I dried myself quickly when the staff alarm sounded and hurried over to the nurses assembly point in the our big dining room.

I was working in casualty that night as one casualty after the other was brought in. One old chap looked up from his trolley and said in a broad Coventry accent, ‘when the next one goes off duck, you dive under me trolley! But of course what we had been trained to do was to protect the patient!

There were so many casualties that night that we ran out of instruments, the electricity went off so we could not sterilise any more nor indeed operate without light. But casualties were dealt with as efficiently as possible. Again the ambulance drivers, both male and female did a wonderful job, dodging bombs to bring in patients and again to move them out of the city to Warwick and Leamington.

It was a long night, but by morning, the worst seemed to be over, however, our biggest casualties were still to come. Many of the patients had been taken into a cellar of the hospital for safety where they were being tended by doctors and nurses. In one corner a mattress had been placed, what no one knew was that beneath it lay an unexploded bomb which exploded and killed patients and possibly two doctors and several nurses, including my friend, a Polish nurse called Brinkarovna. Brinka had lost both of her parents to the Germans and came to England to be near her brother, only to lose her life to a german bomb. She was brought out alive and taken to the Pathology department which remained intact, but when I saw her I realised she was in a really bad way. I looked up at the Doctor, a man I was normally totally in awe of and pleaded with him to do something, but he shook his head sadly and said ‘ I think she is beyond my help my dear’. Her name appears on the London Road memorial.

The following day there was such devastation that there was nowhere for us to go and Matron called us all together and said that if any of us had anywhere else we could stay for a couple of nights to do that and return in a couple of days when hopefully things would be sorted out.

My friend Dorothy Morris, suggested that we go to the house of a family who had brought her to Coventry originally, a well known family in Coventry, the Reverend Ingli James in Morningside. When we arrived we found that the family had evacuated to Wales, but Dorothy had a key and we let ourselves in looking forward to a peaceful nights sleep. We were starving, we had not eaten for over 24 hours and we raised the pantry for food — nothing, except a tin of peaches, a real luxury and one which was probably being saved for a special occasion. We fell on them enjoying every mouthful of the forbidden fruits. Some time later, there was a knock on the door and there stood my boyfriend who took us home to his parents where were we fed and slept the night.

The following day, we returned to the hospital to receive instructions and we told to pack some our belongings and we were taken by coach to Bromsgrove where we stayed for the following summer. It was great to be away from Coventry apart from anything else there was an officer’s mess up the road and we were invited to all their parties, escaping from the nurses home through the window.

On my return to Coventry, I worked at Keresley Hospital which now had an operating theatre and temporary wards and at the convalescent home in Kenilworth High Street. The damaged part of Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital had been cleared, some wards were usable and a casualty unit had been re-established. I worked in the plaster room for several months as part of my continued training which I eventually completed in 1943, just before my marriage. On my marriage I worked in out patients, in the surgery at the Standard Motor Company and as a school nurse, before having my first child in December 1945

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