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When war in Europe was declared over, Barbara was a 20-year-old student nurse working in her home town in Lancashire at Townleys Hospital (now the Royal Bolton Hospital).

鈥淲e had a maternity unit consisting of four wards. Due to a shortage of midwives and orderlies student nurses were sent to work on these wards,鈥� recalls Barbara.

As part of her training, Barbara spent three months on a maternity ward looking after premature babies and their mothers. The wards were 鈥渓ike the Florence Nightingale style wards with 36 beds鈥�.

In the nursery there were between four and twelve premature babies, each weighing less than five pounds: 鈥淲hat a game that was; they had to be fed every two to three hours by pipette or bottle.鈥�

The end of the war was in sight; however it was still an exciting moment when the news was broken.

Barbara was working on her own on a night duty when, at midnight, the ward sister phoned through to say that the war had ended.

鈥淚 ran into the babies ward and told them, I more like shouted, that the war was over and their daddies would be home soon! Then I put all the lights on in the ward and told the mums that the war was over.鈥�

Barbara remembers switching on the light which in retrospect wasn鈥檛 the thing to do during the blackouts. Barbara distinctly remembers that there was one light in the middle of the room, which had a green lampshade.

In 1950, Barbara Gardiner came to live in her husband鈥檚 home town of Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Image: One of the maternity wards at Christmas time. There is a ventriloquist entertaining the patients with doctors, nurses and orderlies gathered around watching. Barbara is the seventh nurse from the left. The year of this photograph is unknown; it is thought to be one Christmas between 1943 and 1947.

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