Description
Christine Wollen was born in 1924 and was a nurse in the war.
She was fifteen when war was declared. Christine remembers sitting her exams in the basement of her school because the air raid sirens could sound at any moment and they could not be moved during the exams. The first excitement of the war for her was when a German parachutist landed on her school netball court.
Christine started working in a children’s hospital because she was not old enough to work at a general hospital. When she hit eighteen she moved to a general hospital, the Bristol Royal Infirmary. The hospital accepted the troop ships that came into Avonmouth and she changed all the soldiers’ dressings before they went on to a military hospital. It was here that Christine learnt how good maggots are at cleaning wounds.
After the war Christine trained as a midwife and went to London to do District Midwifery. She then got married and moved to Richmond, west London to work in the Richmond Royal Hospital in the theatre until she had two girls. Christine went back to work as a District Nurse and retired at the ripe old age of ninety.
