大象传媒

For a sixteen year old girl the outbreak of WW2 was devastating. Plunged into a world of rationing..clothes for which coupons were issued and had to be surrendered..Food for which ration books were issued.. coupons for sweets and chocolates.. everything disappeared from the sweet shopwindows and replaced with cardboard cutouts...and make-up was very scarce.. The Blackout was horrendous. Gas street lamps were painted dark blue as were windows on trains. Going out at night we had to wear luminous flowers in our coat lapels in order for people to see us coming and we carried a torch if batteries were available. At home blackout curtains were hung to prevent light escaping which might be seen by German pilots flying over during a raid, otherwise a street warden would be heard to shout 'put that light out'

My father became a member of the A.F.S. (Auxiliary Fire Service) and was on duty when Leicester was bombed and the huge factory of Freeman, Hardy and Willis received a direct hit and went up in flames. During his service he was machine gunned by the enemy whilst fire fighting. When Coventry was bombed the warnibg siren sounded at 6pm and the all clear at 8am the following morning; a long time stuck in a shelter. My father came to inform us that if he wasn't home by 7am when his shift was ended we would then know that he had gone to Coventry. His was the last fire fighting unit left in Leicester. All the others were already in Coventry. Fortunately he arrived home at 7.30am ready to got to work at 8am.

In 1942 at the age of eighteen I began my nursing career at the Leicester General Hospital and remember well the blackout procedure for the wards at night. Lifting the heavy wooden blackout frames for each window was a nightmare. If the sirens sounded at night and we were in bed we had to assemble to the large nurse's sitting room on the ground floor. After a while we got used to the sirens and remained in our beds, much to the consternation of the Assistant Matron.

We would watch from our bedrooms the planes going out on nightly raids the most spectacular raid being when the planes went over towing the gliders (helper note- raids from UK I think).

Going to the Cinema always presented a problem as we had to leave the cinema before the end of the film being shown in order to catch the 9.30pm bus, as we had to report to the hospital gate porter before 10pm, otherwise we would find oursekves in Matron's office explaining our late arrival.

Rationing affected us too in hospital..we had two jam jars which were kept in the dining room.. one contained two ounces of sugar and the other four ounces of butter which had to last the whole week. Because black stockings were worn with our uniform and coupons were needed for them, all nurses were isued with nine extra coupons and, if we laddered our stockings, we had to darn them as we did with our mufti hose. Celebrating my 21st Birthday with another nurse of the same age was somewhat limiting but our mothers came up with jars of potted meat and tins of salmon which we made into tasty sandwiches which we shared with the other nurses of our group and drank our health in cups of tea.

In 1944 a contingent of wounded soldiers arrived one evening..survivors of the Normandy invasion and I was put in charge of their ward. I was deeply impressed by their cherfulness in spite of their wounds. They were so grateful for being rescued but no one spoke of the war.

Living through the war taught me to have respect and to cherish the things that I had and to work for the things which I didn't have.

I honour and salute all those who served their country especially the R A F..some of the badly burned pilots I nursed at the famous East Grinstead Hospital ,the Queen Vic, under the guidance of Sir Archibald MacIndoe, who formed the Guinea Pig Club.

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