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Mary Addison

I was nearly 5 when World War II began living in Westgate, Kent. My father, George Addison, was a GP and I remember seeing long queues of soldiers coming to the surgery for medicals before joining up.

He went into the RAMC and our mother, granny and nurse took the 7 children to north Wales where we rented a farmhouse for the next 6 years. We loved life on an old fashioned farm and were generously treated by the farmer — allowed on to the farm and fields and got to know the animals and had pets of our own.

I remember Daddy’s airletters arriving and occasional times when they were delayed and the anxiety. While he was in the RAMC he was sent to Germany and the Middle East. At the end of the war when the prisoners of war were liberated, my Father went to one of the concentration camps as part of a medical team who finalised the prisoners’ evacuation.

Then after VE day we returned to Westgate and gradually the houses that had been requisitioned by the Army came back to their owners and people returned to Thanet. Daddy was demobilised in 1946 and came back into practice. This had to be built up again from almost nothing but in the 9 years, before he sadly died, after an early Sunday morning call to a patient, his list of patients was overflowing and still years later people who knew him say “general practice isn’t the same today”.

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