1 week Ago
On D-Day Nurse Joyce Dandridge from Wooburn was waiting anxiously in a train in a railway siding somewhere on the south coast. It was no ordinary train, having been converted to an ambulance train. This is Joyce's story, which she recorded in her diary.
Joyce's nursing career begins Joyce, whose maiden name was Whiteman, was a native of Wooburn. Early in 1940 she married Frederick Ronald Dandridge, known to Joyce as Danny. He was drafted into the RAF and posted abroad, and Joyce joined the Civil Nursing Reserve, becoming a nurse at Slough Emergency Hospital.
She remembers that this was located in "a lovely old house situated at the Langley end of Slough called Upton Towers. It was a Convalescent Home for wounded soldiers, and all the young soldiers in their Royal Blue suits and red ties made a very picturesque sight as they passed the days walking the lovely lawns and rose gardens or sat beneath the enormous Mulberry tree." One afternoon in early 1944 Joyce and two other nurses were summoned to the Matron's office.
Matron Hatch told them that she had been asked to supply three nurses who would be transferred to work in 'another place under the orders of British Army'. They were told to keep this secret, pack a small suitcase with enough clothing for two weeks, and be ready to leave at any time. The Matron said that she had chosen these three girls because they were 'capable workers and in any emergency would know how to behave'.
The girls returned to their normal duties, the weeks passed and they began to wonder if they would ever have need of their little suitcases. On May 26 1944 Joyce had the day off and after visiting her sister, who had just given birth to her second baby, she went to see her parents. There she was told that a policeman had been asking for her, and she must immediately return to the hospital.
After collecting her suitcase she went to the yard in front of the Matron's office and was hustled into the back of an Army ambulance to join six...
Mike Dewey.
