31st December, 1967

I was their ‘sister’ in both senses...

Emma Duffin

VAD Nurse during the First and Second World Wars

It had been a hard life, but a great experience, never to be regretted. We had seen great suffering but greater courage… we had learnt the value of comradeship and that barriers between classes could be ignored: an orderly could be a friend as well as an officer, a patient could be a brother.

To me, some of those men are more real than those I met perhaps a week or so ago. I can never forget them, as many I know will remember me. I was their ‘sister’ in both senses.*

* Entry written later from memory, 1967.