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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Rebecca Hood of The People's War Team in Wales on behalf of Vera Machell and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The story was gathered in Abergavenny at an event to mark the 60th anniversary of VE day.

In 1939 I went to a youth congress of the Seventh Day Adventist Church at Dorguard in Denmark we had a wonderful fortnight and we had no idea of what was going on in the world outside. When we were returning home we got as far as Hamburg Station and we were told to wait in a waiting room and we weren’t allowed to board our train. Our leader disappeared for quite a long long time and when he came back he looked so stressed because we young people didn’t realise what was going on and he said to us…not a word and he asked us to follow him….and we followed him quietly along a station and down some steps and into a dark part of the station and we got into a cattle truck and we were locked in the cattle truck and we got as far as Flushing…and when we got as far as Flushing we got on the boat…the Princess Beatrix and when we arrived in England we realised what was going on and within a few hours war was declared. Now the Princess Beatrix was bombed on its return journey the first ship to be bombed from England…and I consider myself one of the greatest escapers that ever was with all my friends that we should be back in England safely. I went straight into nursing…and that was my war story. nursing.

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