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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Meg Harrison and has been added to the website on behalf of Peggy Harrison, with her permission and she fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was born in 1911 and at the beginning of the war I was working as a nurse in a hospital in Deptford where children — mainly from the East End of London — were sent if they had scarlet fever or diphtheria. Many of these children were undernourished and dirty and lousy when they arrived, but they soon recovered. There was very strict hygiene at the hospital.

A gang of us girls used to go up to London once a week on our day off. We’d carry our gas masks. I don’t remember any bombing. We’d go round the shops trying on clothes and hats — especially at the end of the month when we had no money left. We’d have a meal at Lyons Corner House for one and sixpence.

I went back home in 1941 to New Tredegar in South Wales. Because I was single I had to find another job. I went to work at Maindiff Court in Abergavenny. It was a hospital where soldiers who had mental problems, or nervous breakdowns, were nursed. There were Polish soldiers as well as British. We nurses had to wear black stockings and one of the Polish soldiers would darn them beautifully for us.

Rudolph Hess was there. He was regarded as mentally unstable. We’d see him go out walking round the grounds every day with two soldiers to guard him. He had his own small room but we were not allowed near there. I don’t remember him having any visitors. The soldiers who looked after him were devils. I remember coming off duty one day and they locked me in a padded cell.

We nurses had a good time. We had plenty of money. I made some good friends. We used to take ‘the boys’ to the Walnut Tree. (Now a well known restaurant.) We would sit on the floor in front of the big fireplace and drink cider. A farmer’s daughter kept it at that time. Miss Rhodes (niece of Cecil Rhodes) was nursing with us, but she never joined us at the Walnut Tree. There was a lot of drinking during the war.

It was lovely and quiet at Maindiff Court — you wouldn’t have known there was a war on. I stayed in a farmhouse near the Skirrid. The landlady was mean with our food but we had a good dinner midday at the hospital.

I was married during the war and in April 1942 my son was born. I remember being upstairs in the Penylan Nursing Home in Cardiff and there was an air raid on the docks. A nurse came in and said: ‘Don’t worry, all the babies are down in the cellar.’ I thought, ‘Well if I’m killed here, my son will be an orphan.’

I was living in Bedwellty at the time. No mines were hit that I know of though we did see German planes and one bomb was dropped on the mountain. We could hear the sound of air raids down in Cardiff and Newport. They were bombing the docks there.

I lost touch with most of my friends after the war. It was a new kind of life after the war. The war brought us together with all sorts of people we’d not normally mix with. Everyone assumed we would win the war.

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