Like Charlie Chaplin going off into the sunset, an image thrown up on the white screen hung on the wall of the ward on cinema shows, so with me, one fine morning in February 1943, walking home from Mount Gould hospital.

With an army posting away from London, William and I were parted, leaving our clapboard, two-up-and-two-down cottage at the end of summer, our first life together in the country, wandering around the lanes, nature book in hand, identifying trees flowers and birds. Pretending to a married life only borrowed, visiting Benenden of a Saturday, shopping in Ware, he ‘something in the City’ she a home-loving housewife.

Salving my conscience at not contributing to the war effort by taking an offer of free wool and knitting a balaclava helmet, the finished garment received by the W.V.S. member with an expression of dismay. The sailor, having to endure the hardship and danger of war, now faced with a balaclava helmet having not just one, too-loose hole for his face, but holes in many other places, with a loose neck for draughts to filter through.

I returned to my mother and sister, and was received gladly by Mount Gould, the orthopaedic patients still in place but niggled by rumours of moving to a safer location.

A young ATS girl was admitted with a broken arm, and I noticed as I helped her undress, she had not heeded her mother’s warning to wear clean underclothes lest she meet with an accident.

After a few weeks I went on night duty, a brother giving me a lift in on Christmas Eve on his motorcycle. He too worked nights in the Dockyard, but only a week at a time and it was a ‘winked-at’ custom for the men to stretch out on the work benches for ‘forty winks’ in the early hours of the morning.

For us, keeping awake was difficult, with few calls on our time. I wrote to William, in the light and warmth of the office, vigilant to stop myself falling down a flight of stairs, as the chin sinks to the chest, jerking up, listening for the sound of the door for Night Sister’s early morning round.

I liked orthopaedic nursing, looking after long-term patients, a branch of the profession within my ability and knowledge.

For the morning feed I picked the baby out of her cot, her limbs crucified in plaster, ‘spoiling’ her for the bottle was usually propped up on her pillow.

"You took the baby into your office, Nurse," a patient said, "I saw you."

I was pregnant. At times the nursing was physically heavy. I wanted to run no risks.

I walked home, down the avenue, beside the river, over the bridge temporarily repaired, to home, carrying my clean linen, coming away with much the same worldly goods as I had entered nursing.