I next went on to do General Training and then another spell in Birmingham at as different hospital, wrote Nora Hillman, then landed up in 1939 at the Bristol Children's Hospital, a town which I loved in spite of being there during the 'Blitz'. We had some bad times there with raids but I never saw a child panic while the adults around them were calm.

    During the Battle of Britain when there were frequent alerts, the children used to sit out on the balcony and say 'Sister, Sister, Percy is going up, there's going to be a raid'. Percy being the Barrage Balloon opposite us.

    We sat right on top of the hill in Bristol and therefore we were always in trouble with our blackout - it showed up so. We had some periods without water, gas or electricity when we lived on stew, cooked on an open fire and had one water cart daily for all our needs. Later we had to vacate the hospital in the middle of the night, although we had no casualties. Two little boys discussing this episode later said 'Wasn't it smashing when we came through all those fires, in the ambulance that night.'

    We eventually found a new home in an empty school at Weston-Super-Mare. It took a good deal of cleaning up as it had been used for mothers and babies. While this was being prepared, our children were housed at the Weston Convalescent Home together with patients from all other Bristol hospitals.