大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pennie Hedge, a volunteer from 大象传媒 London on behalf of Iris Woods and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Woods fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The Civil Defence in Nottingham were calling on people to join, and so I volunteered. I was 19. We had to go to meetings, and we were trained in all sorts of things - first aid and things.

We had to prepare the ambulances when the air raid sirens went, in case of casualties. We had to put blankets and hot water bottles in. I learned to drive in the blackout. We couldn't have any lights on. We had lots of air raid alerts, but not many attacks. Mostly the planes went over us to hit Coventry and Birmingham.

One of my main duties was to meet the troop trains, bringing the wounded soldiers home. We drove them to the hospitals. We would also visit them in hospital. If they were too ill to write, we would write letters to their wives and mothers for them.
Some of them hadn't seen any women for months, and were only too pleased to talk to us. You had to be a bit careful!

During the day I worked in a laundry, and we used to get the soldiers' washing to do. Sometimes there would be little notes wrapped up with it "Meet me under the clock..." and such like. We used to send saucy notes back.

At the end of the war I met my husband. We moved to London after we married. I was still in Civil Defence. One day I met a young soldier in East Grinstead Hospital. He came from Wales. I went to the side of the bed and said "What happened to you then?" He said "If you would really like to know, open that drawer. There's a matchbox in there." I opened the matchbox and there was a tiny piece of shrapnel, about as big as the nail on my little finger in it. That had gone into his spine, and he was never going to be able to walk again.

And I thought, if I can help any ex-service men I will. And that's when I started to organise Poppy Day for the Royal British Legion. I did that for 40 years, around Forest Hill, Sydenham area in London. We had to get about 200 trays together. And I'm 85 and still collecting.

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