大象传媒

This story has been writton onto the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storygatherer, Pam McCarthy, on behalf of Mrs Eva Cahill. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

The Mobile Gas Cleansing Team was set up in order to deal with any casualties in the event of chemical warfare. The Team consisted of six members. The leader was a Mr Kernick, and there were five young women: Eileen and Valerie Noble (sisters), myself, the youngest member - Eva Stephens, and two others, but I am afraid that I cannot remember their names.

We had a big army type lorry, based in Redruth, which had a boiler on the back in order to heat water. Eileen drove the lorry, and Valerie travelled with her. It was their job to attend to the boiler. The rest of us travelled with Mr Kernick in his car.

When we arrived at our destination we donned our oilskins, welly boots and gas masks, and set to work with poles, similar to scaffold poles, which fit together in order to form an enclosure, around which we hung a curtain, so that casualties would have privacy because they would have to strip off and be washed. Another young woman and myself were detailed off to do the washing. We each had a bucket with soap flakes, and a brush, like that used to paste wallpaper. With the warm water from the boiler we had nice buckets of warm soapy water. After a good wash down the casualty stood underneath a shower head, which was rigged up from the boiler, and got rinsed off.

We practised at weekends and went to several places giving demonstrations. The idea was to set everything up as quickly as possible. We used to go to Portreath and set up our unit in the square in front of the Portreath Hotel. Also at Four Lanes in the square in front of the hotel. The furthest we travelled to was St Germans. Afterwards we used to have a little liquid refreshment in the hotel. We also practised at the Climax Engineering Works. A few of the young apprentices volunteered to be casualties, wearing their swimming trunks of course.

Fortunately there was no chemical warfare.

I must say, however, that we all thoroughly enjoyed our practice sessions and going out to different places giving demonstrations.

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