Jean Madelaine Caroll

I’ll tell you how I got in. There was a Mrs. Monies, MONIES, and she was very much interested in St. John Ambulance. She was involved as a Girl Guide leader; and I was in Girl Guides at the time. She asked me if I would like to join. So that’s how it happened. Well, there was nothing to it really. It was just first aid training, how to do, it was very basic then, how to do bandages, different bandages, and to be able to roll the different bandages, and to identify them. I finally put it to them, especially to my mother; and I said, if you were in my position, what would you do? She said, I’d go; and that’s all I needed because it was a chance of a lifetime, and I’d never get the opportunity again. So that’s how I went. First impressions was that we were taken to a building and we were given breakfast; and we all had a boiled egg. I thought, this is marvelous because they weren’t giving out eggs willy-nilly; and I just thought, well, this is great, we’re going to have eggs for breakfast. That was the only real egg I had in the whole time I was over there. A lot of them in England, first time was in England, was older people that were brought up from Southern England to get away from the bombing.