Winsford, on the outskirts of Bristol, was a tuberculosis sanatorium, built in open countryside, much the same as Mount Gould but enlarged by a range of Nissen huts, Ward A taking male casualties from the Blitz, Ward B, females, with Ward C as a military unit for convalescent service personnel, staffed by civilians.

The two furthest Nissen huts were our quarters, one for sitting and general usage, the last our sleeping quarters, divided into single bedrooms by flimsy partitions, not sound proofed, with generous bathrooms and ablution sections. The complex joined by a covered walk skirting open countryside.

At the entrance was a guard room, staffed by the Army, the only source of telephone calls in and out. Grinning soldiers overheard my conversation when William telephoned.

I was eating a bun when Matron entered the interview room on my reporting for duty. Here, permanent staff manned the sanatorium, she explained, and I would be on duty that night on the wartime hospital side.

My cubicle held a metal-framed bed, stamped W.D.. We were waited on at table, a hot meal sent up to each ward, kept warm in the kitchen oven on nights.

"Are all your men in, Nurse?"

A forty-something sergeant, trim in uniform, his heavy boots crashing out on the linoleum floor, barked at me.

"I don’t know how many men I’m supposed to have," I sauced him, not yet having read the report.

"In the latrine," the sergeant was told by a private, enquiring of one missing patient.

The men wore dark trousers, white shirts and red ties, lining up for inspection at the end of each bed, kit set out exactly as regulations demanded, to be inspected by an officer.

Yet once the last count for the day had been held, the patients, if at all fit, made their way through the fields to the village pub, returning by the same route at any hour, the end French windows left open, shielded by a screen.

On each locker I put out a large bowl for often the soldiers were sick.

Amongst our polyglot staff were conscientious objectors, volunteering to work in a hospital, not, so far as I can remember drafted to the military ward.

It was our task to teach these men bed making, giving a blanket bath, up to first-year standard, though we ourselves were not receiving lectures, only learning on the job. One C.O. was a trained architect.

Our male patients, if discovering our first name, would use that and took advantage if we innocently leant across their bed.

The victims of air raids seriously wounded were being treated by a new method of putting the injured limb into plaster, actual heat rising from the ravaged wound, blood spreading out on the surface of the plaster, red jam on cream.

A young man, his arm set at an acute angle, his elbow blown away, exposed, a walking patient, was treated with sulphanilamide, also a new treatment.

A Welshman begged to be sent home to die. He had a wound big enough to sink one’s hand in, in his hip, clinging on to life. Perhaps because no-one wished to take responsibility for his dying on the journey, he was refused. He died in England.

One night, with a nurse who knew even less than I did as a junior, I was on this men’s ward, with the radio on broadcasting a pep-talk from a well-known American journalist, referring to Hitler, in a mocking way, as Herr Schicklegruber.

"Who is this fella Schicklegruber?" asked a patient in a la-de-da tone of voice.

Having been in the attic of his home, as a direct hit wrecked it, he had been whooshed down to the basement with hardly a scratch.

The men roared with laughter just as Night Sister entered for her first inspection, scolding me because the lights were not out and the men not bedded down.

I went home for a weekend, William having been posted far away. Looking forward to a night in bed, the train was hours late as we pulled into North Road station in the middle of a heavy air raid, the sky bright as a false dawn.

The glass roof above us shattered into fragments overhead as passengers hurried to a taxi rank. All through the Blitz, working through the night, taxi men were on call.

I climbed in the back, between two strangers, one passenger in the seat beside the driver. But we waited, listening to the ack-ack fire, and three more passengers climbed in on top of us. When a soldier, in full kit, clung on to the running board in front, we moved off, going first to the passenger’s home nearest. Some alighted only to find a note pinned to their front door.

At last only the soldier and I were left. Each of us, and rightly, paid full fare. My family were in the shelter next door. We had, at that time, no shelter ourselves, so I put a few cushions under the dining room table and settled down for a few hours sleep.

With both Sister and Staff off duty for the morning I was assigned to take out the stitches of an amputee. I talked to the young man, for I was nervous, not having taken out stitches before, and these were complex, inserted to hold a fold of skin over his leg, severed below the knee. it looked like a boiled jam pudding freshly dished up. He had been standing at the back door of his house, he explained, when the bomb fell.

I knew the stitch had to be snipped away from the knot, so as to avoid pulling the barb painfully through the flesh, but these stitches eluded me, slipping below the surface of the skin. The next morning it all had to be done again, by Staff this time.

I lost a treasured pair of gold coloured cami knickers to a thief. Not only the cost but the value in scarce clothing coupons.

Our leisure time was spent at the cinema in Bristol, though we could not stay to see the end of any film for the hospital bus left too early in the evening. A day off I spent in Bath, a beautiful city, gazing longingly at lovely material displayed in a shop; no money, no coupons.

I had made up my mind to go out on this day off but the top drawer of my chest of drawers had jammed, trapping my purse. A strong pair of scissors opened the back of the flimsy furniture, a damage to His Majesty’s property for which I had to pay.

William visited, no longer a free billet as at Plymouth, at my mother’s house, but a rented room in the local pub in the village. We walked in the country and ate buns freshly baked in the village bakery, lifted out of the oven on a flat wooden spade.

Never mechanically minded, I had somehow jammed the mechanism of a specially designed bed for a patient with a broken back.

Flustered, defeated, I sent for Night Sister, who demonstrated I had only been pushing the lever the wrong way. Poor patient left, suspended, face down.

I continued to read, though without the rich source of free library books provided by William in the old St. Alban’s days. I was over twenty when I first read ‘Through the Looking Glass.’ We wrote frequently, William often on the move on manoeuvres.

Men and women were called up for National Service as the age group was reached, and, hoping for a half day in Bristol, I looked forward to the event, only to be told nurses were exempt apart from which, as a married woman I could not be forced to comply. To volunteer, yes.

I contacted scabies from a Bristol fireman who had lost both legs in the Blitz, an itchy, contagious eruption in the skin between the fingers. With the usual admonition of having brought infection on myself I was sent home, where I remained for six weeks before being declared bug free.

Staff had changed in that short time. There was no girl I was friendly with. Having the responsibilities of a second year nurse in training I felt promoted beyond my ability.

On operating day I was flustered as a tiny tablet, melting in sterile water in a spoon, over a Bunsen burner, dried up. It disappeared. Intended as a pre-operative medication for a patient, the theatre list had to be rearranged to accommodate the slip-up.

One evening I was sent to call out the medical officer. Doctors lived in a separate Nissen hut, and were reputed to be better fed than nursing staff, grumbling over being fed Spam and offered tins of black treacle as conserve for bread and margarine.

The door was partly open and for the first time in my life I heard the tub-thumping, melodramatic colourful notes of ‘Night on a Bare Mountain.’

The doctor did not at once respond, standing listening just as I did, hesitating before moving off without him, both of us warming our hands at the music, reluctant to leave its fire. I knew how he felt. Often at lunchtime, we had to leave radio comedy broadcasts to return to duty.

On duty at night, a few weeks later, a row blew up after I had read my report to the day Sister. A patient complained that I had ignored his request for treatment. Flustered, I denied this. It was left hanging in the air. A dark cloud which could develop into a thunderstorm, or blow over. No harm had been done. It had been a busy night.

But I walked past the dining hut, packed my clothes, after changing from uniform, into the case kept under my bed, and walked out.

Just leaving, stopped in the driveway by the Guard house was a milk lorry. Begging a lift from the driver, sitting high up in the cab as if haughtily surveying the ground, I was driven to Templemeads station to catch a train to London.

William had been posted to London, and could be billeted on me, his wife, paid a subsistence allowance, living together, his hours largely office hours, extended and occasionally requiring guard duty at night.

The hospital office sent on my insurance card without comment, and my monthly pay cheque. The British Red Cross Society made no complaint.

They even requested me to fill in occasional nights on duty at the First Aid Post in a tube station nearby where we lived in Oakley Gardens, Chelsea.

Thousands slept underground in the war, either in bunk beds erected on the platforms or on the platform itself, rolled up in bedding, taking no notice as underground trains screeched through their sleep.

Henry Moore’s drawings were stencils taken from life, rounded forms, round mouths open, under the rounded walls of underground stations.

One man asked to be allowed to sleep in the Casualty post, claiming that the regular nurse allowed him this privilege as he was bronchitic. I had no means of checking.

But another spell of tonsillitis and a boil developing high up my nose caused a spell off work.

Without anaesthetic the doctor had lanced the boil.

‘Oh, did it hurt?’ she asked, as tears sprang to my eyes.