I still have my little red morocco bound Bible given for good attendance at the Mildmay Mission Sunday School.

I was born in September 1933.

One place the family sheltered during the War was in a brick built street shelter on the corner of Elwin Street and during the night I fell out of a top bunk onto the concrete floor and was taken (I think during an air raid) to the Mildmay hospital and they stitched me up – I still have the scar where they did a very neat job and I was able to go straight back home.

However during the air raid in which a German bomb went down the air shaft in the deep shelter in the old Columbia Market (pictures exist to document it) that was on my 7th birthday, I had to stay home that night as I had pneumonia. The explosion was dreadful and many lives were lost. How very brave all those nurses and doctors, firemen and ambulance workers and so many others were and what a superb service at the Mildmay and other local hospitals.

Eileen is my younger sister (one of twins) born 1946 and our mother died in the Mildmay, they gave her wonderful care in 1964.

Betty Telford (Madley, Hereford)

Image: View from St Paul's Cathedral after the Blitz, H.Mason, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons