大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshome guard on behalf of Dorothy Painter and has been added to the site with her permission.

I was 15 in 1939 and still at Blackburn High School. I remember coming home from school in June 1940 after Dunkerque. I was standing on the Boulevard near the station and saw all the stretchers and ambulances. Convoys of the wounded had been brought up from the South and were being ferried off for operations at Queen Mary's - the military hospital at Calderstones.

On August 12th 1940 I started at Blackburn Royal Infirmary as a student radiographer - "the only grouse they haven't shot," teased one of my friends. I was paid 12/6 per week and given a free lunch as well.

All the hospital windows were sandbagged and some of the wards had been taken over for the wounded. They used to bring in convoys from the Far East - lots of the men were bright yellow from having taken Mefocryn - the anti malarial drug. My boss's sister was the matron at the Royal Ordnance Factory at Chorley and she told me the workers there were quite yellow too - they called them canaries!

The men were so thin they could only hold their trousers up with braces. Some of them had been plastered-up on top of suppurating wounds and when the plasters were changed I never smelt anything like it. The plasters had to be burned in the boiler room.

I can remember Christmas 1940 when the Blitz started. The sirens went off at a certain time every night and one night we were in the middle of having tea. I remember swearing and ladies DID NOT swear. My father was so cross with me that he didn't buy me a present that year.

We used to work 24 hours on and then 24 hours off. We used to go to Blackpool and I remember dancing on the Pier and at the Tower Ballrom. It was lovely dancing at the Tower - everyone danced then - it was where you met your partners. I remember hiding from a fight there between Black and White American GIs.

Dring the War everyone got mixed up - you met people you would not normally have met. I went to St George's Hall for VE Day - but I remember the grief of the mothers of the boys who wouldn't be coming back. Their curtains were drawn - there was no rejoicing for them. We thought things were going to be different after the War - but they weren't - rationing went on into the 1950s. I got married in 1949 and I remember having to buy utility furniture for every room.

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