大象传媒

Mrs Sellick was born in 1906,and lived with her mother in Somerset on a farm. Her father had died when she was two months old and she had no siblings. Whilst living in Somerset she worked as hairdresser as well as helping her mother on the farm.

World War One commenced when Mrs Sellick was eleven years old and she doesn't remember much about it apart from seeing cavalary going up through the road. They were on horses, armed with guns. Mrs Sellick had to hide her horses away at Wellington Monument, as the regulation was that if you had any horses there was a chance that they would be called up for use by the servicemen, and Mrs Sellick did not want her horses to be, so she hid them. They received daily reports on the progress of the war via a national newspaper. Mrs Sellick and her mother worked hard together everyday on the farm, and raised all the animals including a pig called Molly whom Mrs Sellick grew very attached to. Mrs Sellick's mother was her all.

In 1924 Mrs Sellick trained to be a hairdresser. The training was three years but she did not complete them as she got the chance to set up her own business. The salon had 6 members of staff, one of whom is still alive today and still keeps in contact via regular telephone conversations. They reminisce about the past and the good times. She owned the business for around 20 years. Mrs Sellick has seen so many changes since she was a haidresser and has now referred to present day hairdressing to "hairmucking".

After World War Two Mrs Sellick and her mother moved down to Bournemouth to live as her Auntie lived down here and so they let the farm out to somebody that her father knew when he was alive. She said that they heard the news that the war had started announced over the wireless, and she listened all the time to get regular updates.

Mrs Sellick worked in the ambulance service as an ambulance driver. She was stationed in Plymouth, the reason being because of all the bombing. She quotes "They had it as bad as London. It was terrible and devastating". This was all voluntary work and she was called upon whenever she was needed. You had to be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Her partner was a German doctor, and apparently he was brilliant, but he did boss her about alot.

One time they were called to a lady who was in labour. Mrs Sellick did not know anything about having babies, and was told by the doctor " for goodness sake get your brain going". She had to get some hot water out of the ambulance's radiator, because this was the only place she could get it from. She hit it with a hammer the water was brown and dirty but did the job and mother and baby were fine. The baby was delivered in Yelverton on a bomb site, which is used by the RAF now.

Mrs Sellick was ferrying the dead and injured back and forth to Plymouth, where there was a makeshift hospital where surgoens and doctors performed operations and general observations etc. She says they were wonderful.

She was one in a few of lady drivers in the ambulance service and seemed to get on very well with everyone, working together everyday. Everything they did no matter how difficult, was turned into fun. One day Mrs Sellick and the doctor were going along Yelverton Road and a bomb dropped and hit them over to the other side of the wall. It took them right over the wall but somehow they managed to land on their feet. They both looked at each and said, "how are we going to get out of here?", and the doctor said "well, definitely not the way we came in!".

Nothing is impossible during war. Age didn't stop people. Even little children knew that they had to help in someway, running to get help or even helping bandage the injured. Depending on how serious the work was they would either eat at the canteen or, if this was far away, they would send someone out to deliver it. Not knowing what she was going to find when she entered ruined houses was a terrible job, but luckily for her she didn't have to do too much of that. She found it amazing how some people would get out alive. Mrs Sellick quoted " I know its a wicked thing to say but I had a wonderful and happy time during the war".

One evening Mrs Sellick was caught having a streak of light Showing through her curtains, and if anyone had a streak of light showing you were for it. The ARP came round and informed her.

There were two main places where Mrs Sellick enjoyed going to dances to socialise with friends: the YMCA and Fox's factory which was a material company famous for making Navy uniforms. One evening Mrs Sellick and the doctor were leaving the dance and it was dark There were no lights and instead of putting her arms around the doctor so that they could lead each other through she put her arms around a lamp post and felt she couldn't apologise enough to the doctor.

Yelverton was full of landmines. During the War Mrs Sellick was sent to London for two months to help releive some of the workers up there, and whilst she was there she states that whilst here Mrs Sellick helped evacuate children to all different parts of the country by train. When asked how London was compared to Plymouth she replied " Plymouth was more compact but neither was worse than the other. They were equally as bad but in different ways.

Whilst in London she was billeted at 61 Dover Street, saying that she visited it last year and she said she could've cried, as the Dover Street she remembers was clean and up tto date. It is now a very filthy street, she couldn't beieve it.

She went up to London in the war with the German doctor and quotes " I didn't go anywhere without him", he remained a great friend of hers until he passed away eight years ago.

After London she moved back to Plymouth and whilst away things had seemed to get worse rather that better. The bombings in Plymouth were never ending, due to the amount of ships that were there and being en route to Bristol.

Throughout the War Mrs Sellick and her Mother never left each other's side. She remembers having lots of people from New Zealand who had come over. One day she can remember sitting through a terrible snow storm in which the New Zealand and the English boys both had a team and they had a huge snowball fight. Unfortunatley though Mrs Sellick cannot remember who won, so she said it must have been a draw.

During her time there she met lots of different people from all sorts of places: Americans, New Zealanders, Canadians etc, who all blended into the community, joined in all the socials and apparently all the girls were after them.

Whilst working within the ambulance service she kept her business up and running all throughout the War. It seems that she was a fantastic member of the team within the ambulance service and likewise in the hairdressing industry, but admits that she was no good at being domesticated. She learnt to drive though at the young age of 12 on her farm in Somerset. This experience set her in good stead for driving the ambulance.Whilst working as an ambulance driver she had her own wehicle which was later commandeered. You would never have had a car going to one place with only one person - you would always have the car full before hand, which is an economical idea as petrol was quite limited.

When Mrs Sellick was asked about how she managed on rations she answered, "Yes, but if we ever felt like we needed a treat we would kill a pig and share it out". She also said, "Why spend time breeding them when you can't eat them? We would have starved."

Mrs Sellick's husband served in the RAF as an aircraft instructor. He worked mostly in Tolouse in France, but they didn't meet until after the war.

She stated at this point that the war wasn't all horror, even though through working as an ambulance driver she did see alot of it. The first horrible thing she could remember was seeing a man whose arm had fallen off, and she said at times like these you close your eyes, take a deep breath and get on with it.

Along her way she came across alot of evacuees who had been moved to North Somerset, and she also came across alot of prisioners of war and refugees who were used to doing work. She said they never moaned they worked hard. Her philosophy was to live each day and make the most of it as you may be dead tommorow and by the sounds of it she did.

If anything medically went wrong you would have to fix it yourself. Well she did, when she had a piece of shrapnel in her she had to remove and bandage it up herself. She worked as an ambulance driver throughout the whole war and after. She only gave up driving 4 months ago, and will be celebrating her 100th birthday on April the 15th 2006 with a huge party.

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