From Firewatcher to TB Nurse

This story is about what my Granny did during the war. She wanted to make a difference, but because she was working for the Civil Service in the Ministry of Health, they would not release her to work in the Wrens, (the Womens Royal Naval Service). She worked in a tall building called Dominion House at Moorgate in London. Each night during the Blitz, they would all take turns to go up on to the flat roof of the building and cover up the incendiary bombs that landed on the roof with sand, using some shovels. Later on in the war there was a critical shortage of nurses and more casualties, so she was released from the Civil Service to become a nursing auxilliary at a TB hospital in Plymouth for two years. She was looking after lots of men who were sailors in the Arctic travelling to Russia, to bring food supplies back to England. Their ships had been torpedoed, and as they had been in the sea so long, they were ill and weak and developed TB. Unfortunately, my Granny caught TB, and was not allowed to see her baby son for a year. She could have died, but thankfully antibiotics were invented just in time and she was able to recover.

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