大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Matthew Smaldon on behalf of Mrs Noel Hall and her sister Mrs Anne Pellow. It has been added to the site with their permission. Mrs Hall and Mrs Pellow fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

Mrs Noel Hall

鈥淒uring the war we lived in Granby Barracks in Devonport. My father was in the services, so that is why we moved to Plymouth from Gosport, where I was born. He was a company sergeant-major gym instructor in the RASC. There were nine girls in the family, but two died. Daddy always wanted a son, so they adopted a boy, Edwin.

I was a probationary nurse at Freedom Fields Hospital. It was civilian nursing. I think that the Germans thought that the incinerator, where all the stuff was burnt, that was Dockyard. The planes used to go round and round, then they used to drop these Molotov bombs 鈥� they used to fly all over the place, and they used to spin, and they鈥檇 go down through one floor, then the next. And this was a civilian hospital.

I remember the big blitz on Plymouth, as that was when all my friends were killed. It has never left me. That night, matron rang up and asked me if I would go to the block down on the geriatrics side of the hospital. On the ground floor they had what was called a B.I.D. 鈥� Brought In Dead. She asked if I would go down with another nurse with a hurricane lamp, and lay out the bodies. That night matron moved me down there, and I had been on the children鈥檚 ward for months. It was like fate, I wouldn鈥檛 be here today otherwise.

The children in the ward were the young babies; the waifs and stray babies who needed looking after, and the nurses were being trained from nursery nurses, to probationary nurses. I was one of the senior ones there. When the raid started, they grabbed the babies up, and they all went down stairs, with the babies.

I remember the day we had the funeral of all the nurses and children. We went to Efford Cemetery, and we had to put all our capes on, with the red turned out, all dressed nicely. We had to stand in line, all the nurses, by all these coffins. And it has stuck in my mind, I remember that there was one little girl, her father was a schoolmaster in London, and they only had a boy and girl, and she got killed. She was only about 17, she was doing her probationary work, and I can see him there now, and it has never left me. He was standing by her coffin, smoothing the coffin, like he was smoothing a child. It never left me, and it never will I don鈥檛 think. Then we had to go down and parade and they were all lowered into the ground there. It was a terrible morning that was. Some of the old dears, the nurses, were nearing retiring when they got killed, it was so sad. There was one lovely staff nurse, she was a beautiful girl, and her husband was in the Army. They鈥檇 just spent the weekend together before he was sent overseas again. She got killed. She was very tall and she used to write a lot of music and play the violin. I used to listen to her. It is these people who stay in my memory. She was killed down on the maternity block, where they were delivering the babies. So what happened down there, with all the babies, I don鈥檛 know how many were there. You were pushed from here to there, wherever you were wanted, and you went, willingly. I never want to see a war again. I would rather be in my grave. It is a terrible thing. It takes all your loved ones.

In the hospitals we nurses had to get up and fix the blackout material of the windows every night. At Freedom Fields we had the children鈥檚 ward, maternity block, medicine, surgery, ear nose and throat, and we had four, if not six, geriatric blocks. And those poor dears used to scream. I know one night, I was going up to the top floor, and it was three stories high, up all these big stone steps like the infirmaries were years ago. And Matron stood up there, I remember she was very tall and thin, and she was shaking in her shoes poor dear. And she was stood there, and I could hear them screaming out, and I said 鈥業鈥檇 better go on鈥� and she said 鈥楴ow, they鈥檝e had their day, you stay here.鈥� I said 鈥楴o matron, I couldn鈥檛 live with it鈥� and I went to the end of the ward, and just outside comes screaming down a bomb. The poor old dears were so frightened, but what could you do with two hundred odd people, all bedridden, some of them blind? You did your best - that is all you could do.

We managed to perk up after, and the hospital was still used, and the maternity block was built up, and it began to get light again. The days were warm, and the wards were all made nice. And I wouldn鈥檛 have changed my work for all the tea in China; I did really love it.

One night, they called me and said 鈥榃ould you go into ward two, into the bathroom. There is a little girl there, a heart case, has just been killed. Will you lay her out with the staff nurse. She was only about 12. I remember the first case I had brought in, when the matron directed me to the BID. The first was an ARP girl. She was massive. She had her tin helmet on, and her wellies. You had to undress them, and you never knew whether a leg was coming off, or an arm was coming off, you know. And this poor girl couldn鈥檛 have been more than, well, between 20 and 25. It was all in her head. And these things you don鈥檛 forget you see.

I remember one night, there were all these blessed incendiaries, and they were burning and they would swivel round. You see, if you could get the sandbag on top of them it would stop the spin. And I used run with those, then run down the stairs to the next one. Coming home along Fore Street in Devonport one day, this plane came down, with its machinegun firing up all the wall 鈥� he could鈥檝e caught me or anybody, but they never did.

I was on duty the night of the very big blitz on Plymouth, and the next morning I had to walk from Freedom Fields to our bungalow in Granby Barracks in Devonport, and it took me three and a half hours. I was walking over the top of houses and things, and the flames were meeting over the streets, and people were crying 鈥極h my sons gone, my daughters gone鈥�. It was just terrible to hear it. You would just try and comfort them some way or another. When I got home, low and behold Mummy鈥檚 bungalow was flat. The family were in the air raid shelter, and two armour-piercing bombs went underneath the shelter, and hadn鈥檛 gone off. When Daddy climbed out, that was the first time a cigarette went near his mouth. He never smoked, but they made him. He lost his speech 鈥� he鈥檇 watched this happen, and nothing blew up. Just my sister was hurt, burnt on the back of her leg from the phosphorous.

My sister, who was burnt, she died in the end from a subarachnoid haemorrhage. I think it was all due to phosphorus that got into her blood. She never got rid of it. I think it affected her whole body; she was never the same character after it. She died young, leaving a young son. Her poor husband had been a prisoner of war of the Germans for four years, and he suffered terribly.

One of the things we used to love was at the end of the day, we used to go down to the coffee room in the hospital and they鈥檇 have all the buns and things, left over from the meals, and we would have them with our coffee, all gathered together, chatting away. It was a very big place, that nursing home. It was a massive place at Freedom Fields. We used to have wonderful dances there, and used to entertain the Army, Navy and Airforce.

We were an overflow hospital 鈥� if there were military casualties, we had to take them in. Mostly they would go to their own hospitals, but casualties are people, so we would of course take them. But it didn鈥檛 happen very often. We had the wards ready for them, the beds were all made up, hot water bottles in them 鈥� there was no central heating in those days.

I used to love the egg substitute 鈥� it was beautiful. You only got one egg a week on ration you see. We had a dietician at the hospital, Ms Sophie Dyer, she used to get all the rations. If I pass there, where Freedom Fields used to be, I often can see all our friends together, in our uniforms, going up to see old Sophie Dyer to get our breakfast, and walking up the tunnel path as I used to call it.

The shopping centre, Fore Street in Devonport was beautiful. There was Marks and Spencers, Woolworths, Liptons, all those big places. In one night, the whole of Fore Street was gone. At the top of that street is where we lived, at Granby Barracks.
You had to shop in a little pannier market after that.

My brother was in the Navy. His ship was torpedoed off the Java coast and he was a prisoner in Japan for four years. He had a terrible time when he was out there, and yet he lived until he was 90. He said it was terrible when they swam to shore and they saw a lot of very young Australian nurses, bayoneted by the Japanese. They buried my brother up to his neck in sand, with a tap dripping on his head. My brother was mentioned in an Australian book, called Behind Bamboo. He wouldn鈥檛 let us see a copy of the book 鈥� he said we had suffered enough here. When he came home, he had a to have a medical, and they couldn鈥檛 find his heart. They had to race him through to the naval hospital, and they found that his heart had moved because of being in the water for so long, before they got to land. We heard from friends that he tried to keep his company together, he has a long rope which he told them to hold on to, and to keep talking, until they got into shore.

One day Mummy and Daddy received five telegrams, saying that my brother, and brothers in law were all listed as missing. Gradually we did hear that they were prisoners of war. I am talking about years between before we did hear anything about them. My brother in law was a mental wreck when he came home.

My other brother in law escaped from Dunkirk, and saved other men by swimming out with them. He taught the officers wives to swim at the lido, so he was well suited to do this. When he came home his wife didn鈥檛 recognise him 鈥� all unshaved and wet - and he slept for three days solid. They lived in Reading, and he caught a spy there. They were signalling to the planes where to drop their bombs with lights.
We had another sister who was in nursing. She was at the Battle Hospital in Reading where they used to take the wounded in from the boats.

I remember the Americans coming to Plymouth. There must have been nice ones among them, but we didn鈥檛 really like them. They always felt that they owned you; that they could do what they liked. They won the war, that sort of thing. Really, they came in at the end of the war. But there were some nice ones among them, I鈥檓 sure. And we were all after the same thing, victory.鈥�

Mrs Anne Pellow

鈥淭he soldiers didn鈥檛 think they would find any of us alive. We lived near the naval Dockyard, and that is what they were going for that night. We heard it coming down, and the thud. Daddy came down and said 鈥楧on鈥檛 move鈥�, and he took us out one by one. He knew that the bomb could go off at any time. He managed to get us all out. When the soldiers came to help, they didn鈥檛 expect to find anyone alive, because of the devastation. The bungalow was burnt, because one of my sisters, Yvonne, was coming out of the bungalow to come into the shelter when an incendiary bomb came right into her and burnt her legs. So she had to go to hospital. She was on crutches for many many months. And that wasn鈥檛 the first time we were bombed out. We were in quarters there, and we had to move from there to the bungalow. In the end we had to cook our food in furnaces outside of the house, and take it back in to eat, as there was no kitchen. First of all, they used to take the army families out onto the Moors, in the lorries. There were a lot of civilians walking out onto the moors, with all their bags. We used to go out to Two Bridges, and all out that way. Then it got so bad, they used to take us out on lorries to Agaton Fort out at Crownhill, and they would put us down in the dungeons. They had all beds made up for us. All the army families from the barracks would go out. They were very kind, the soldiers, always a cup of tea in the mornings. It was surprising, but everybody would help everybody at the time. We always felt safe in the barracks, as they always locked the gates overnight. Once every twelve months, we had to have official passes to get in to barracks for 24 hours, to show to the guards.

One day, and this was daytime, we were standing out in the barracks, and this German plane come over, and some of our guns must have hit it, and it came down in Devonport Park. The German pilot bailed out, but they did get him.

I didn鈥檛 work, but I used to take and fetch 20 to 30 army children to the school, at Paradise Road in Devonport, from the Barracks. It was so near the Dockyard, there were a lot of bombs. A lot of the ladies, the civilians, used to take on the work of air raid wardens. I used to do it around the Barracks, making sure that everyone was all right, that there were no casualties, and that sort of thing.鈥�

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