A new BBC drama, The Night Watch, tells of people's lives and loves during The Blitz of 1940/41.


London ablaze during the Blitz of 1940. It became known as the Second Great Fire of London.

One of the characters includes Kay, a brave member of the wartime London Auxiliary Ambulance Service (LAAS).

But apart from this new drama, the contributions of the brave women of the LAAS has been largely forgotten.

With millions of British men fighting the Nazis in Europe and Africa, the women back home had to do jobs which the men did. One of them was being a paramedic. And, of course, being a medic in Britain in 1940 was a very important job.


Claire Foy as Helen , caught in a Nazi bomb attack during the Blitz, in new BBC drama The Night Watch


The devastation of a London street after another Luftwaffe attack

One last surviving member of the LAAS, Caroline Hawes, 94, has given an interview in which she tells of her life in the LAAS, and some of the horrific sights which she saw amongst the burning rubble of 1940 London which will haunt her forever.

“When a bomb dropped, we would go to where it landed,” says Caroline matter-of-factly. “How did we know where to go? We’d follow the fire and smoke.”

Although she is now frail, and her short-term memory is sketchy, her recollections of London during the Second World War are as fresh as if it all happened yesterday.

There were 130 LAAS stations around London, with roughly 10,000 drivers risking their lives daily by heading into perilous situations to try to salvage as many lives as possible.


London still bears the scars of the War. This is bomb damage on the side of the Victoria and Albert Museum

By the end of November 1940 nearly 13,000 Londoners had died in the Blitz, and a further 20,000 were injured as Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe relentlessly pounded Britain.

At one stage the Nazis bombed the capital for 76 consecutive nights and more than a MILLION houses in the city were destroyed or damaged.

Read the Caroline Hawes interview: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-storie ... -23267021/