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Service no. P/250106. Funny how you never forget it!
I undertook my nursing training in the London Hospital from 1936-40 and then moved on to midwifery training in Birmingham from 1940-42. I was actually on fire watch without a helmet the night Coventry was raided; we could see the fires burning.

In November 1942 I joined the QAs. My joining station was the Manor House Hotel at Moretonhampstead, a requisitioned military hospital. From there I was posted to Woolwich as no.100 BGH in January 1943.

The next month we embarked on a hospital ship to Algiers via Gibraltar. We were followed all the way from Avonmouth to Gibraltar by a German U boat and stayed two weeks in Gib while the Royal Navy dealt with it!

Arriving at Algiers on 15th March 1943, we went by local train (at walking pace!) to Phillippeville, where we became 96 BGH, which was a tented hospital on sand! The wounded we treated came mainly from operations to take Tunis.

I left exactly a year later with another QA (just the two of us) in a convoy to Naples, arriving in a horrendous air raid. We slept under a billiard table! We were posted to no. 2 BGH in the grounds of the palace at Caserta. No.2 (NZ) hospital was also there. We treated casualties from the battle to take Monte Cassino. Before the battle a boyfriend took me up another mountain to look at the monastery (well…. That was our story!).

A few months later, I was posted to no.11 CCS in Brindisi. There we treated casualties from commando raids in Albania. No.11CCS had come to Brindisi from Palestine and those QAs hadn’t been back to UK since 1939. Mary and I were still together, colleagues if not great friends.

A short time later we embarked on a hospital ship, the Principessa Giovana, requisitioned from the Italians, where I met my greatest friend, whom I’d first met in Moretonhampstead! We remained friends until she died in 1984. We were godmothers to each others elder sons. Reunited, we spent the first night catching up on a year’s talking whilst demolishing a bottle of NAAFI gin.

We disembarked at Ancona where we remained about a week. We were able to have a proper bath in Ancona in the public bath house under the main square. It was the first chance I’d had for a proper bath since leaving the ship in Algiers. All that time we had been using a portable canvas bath or just a basin! It’s amazing what you can do standing up in a bucket……!

Next port of call was Perugia and then on to Rimini. The sisters’ mess was a third rate hotel with no staff, but all rooms were en-suite, of a sort; a loo and a basin with a tap (cold!). The hospital had been an orphanage for naval children. Both buildings were literally on the sands – just think what you would pay for that now! However, the sands were littered with anti-personnel mines at the time so you couldn’t build sandcastles. We were treating casualties from the battle for Bologna, a few miles further North.

I became engaged at this time and on VE night I was celebrating with my fiancé. Some American servicemen decided to celebrate with a bonfire on the beach into which they threw live ammunition. Another occasion for under the table!

I came home on leave in September of 1945 to be married, after which I returned to Italy. My final release was in March 1946.

In June 2004 I went to France with Seaton’s twinning association to mark the 60th anniversary of D Day. Our twin town of Thury Harcourt is near Caen and the beaches. We laid wreaths in both German and British cemeteries, and also on the town war memorial. Those of us with war medals wore them – I had my five.

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