'Everything
was going to change'Betty Carter recalls the
first night of the Second World War | | •
STRONG MEMORIES: Beryl Carter |  | | •
ON DUTY: Beryl as a teenager after qualifying as an SRN. |
THE
FIRST night of the Second World War is clearly etched on Beryl Carter’s mind.
Now
in her 80s, Beryl, of Malden Road, Sidmouth, said: “I was 18 and training
to be a nurse at Richmond Hospital. We were all so keyed up about it. Suddenly
the air raid sirens sounded and we all had to get up - I was asleep - put on our
uniforms and go on duty to prepare for anything that got to the wards.
“I
asked the sister what I should do. She said there was an old lady who was rather
nervous so I went over to her and asked ‘would you like me to hold your hand?’
“She
said: ‘No nurse, I have had my life, you get under the bed.’
“I
didn’t but I can see that bed now, it was next to the kitchen. We had to
go round with tiny torches because of the heavy blackouts.
“It came
to nothing. Everyone was so on the alert they got frightened there might be bombers
to follow.”
Remembering her experiences 60 years after VE Day, Beryl
recalls how she asked to be transferred to Liverpool and Chester as bombing there
worsened.
At Upton Hospital, Chester, a mental hospital she remembers,
she had to nurse people in Portakabins.
“I didn’t like casualty,
but it was alright once they were in bed.”
Having met future husband
Ted Lloyd – clapper boy on the Robert Donat film Thirty Nine Steps –
while he was in Richmond Hospital for a neck operation, Beryl had to join the
Civil Nursing Reserve once they were married.
Then, as the first of her
three daughters, Janet, was born, she forfeited her nursing career to become a
mother.
Ted joined the RAF hoping to become a pilot, but instead became
a compass adjustor, and as he travelled to various camps so Beryl uprooted to
follow.
A well-known TV cameraman after the war, Ted, who died in 1987, made
documentaries about the lives of Richard Dimbleby and Lord Mountbatten.
After
his death Beryl moved to Sidmouth and met her second husband, Donald, 83, who
served in the Navy for 15 years, 11 of those in submarines as an engineer.
“How
did I feel about the war?” said Beryl. “It was scary but I was excited.
Instead of an ordinary way of life everything was going to change.”
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