Laughter among the bombs as Bexhill Hospital was attacked from the air ...

As Bexhill gears up for the annual Battle of Britain anniversary commemorations, a return visit paid by retired midwife Jessie Leybourne (nee Morley) to the hospital where she trained as a nurse has brought back a flood of memories.

Typically of her generation, it is the humour not the horror of the attacks that remain uppermost in her memory.

Jessie, now living in Eastbourne, began her training at Bexhill Hospital in May 1941. At that stage, young nurses were accommodated in the Nurses' Home in the grounds, now greatly enlarged and adapted as Bexhill Health Centre.

She says: "As I came to the end of my first year the war was getting worse. The hospital had four direct hits when I was on duty. My friend and I were machine-gunned by a stray German fighter as we returned from the nurses' home to our ward after an afternoon off, and we were told off by the ward sister for arriving on duty in an untidy manner."

By that stage of the war fast fighter-bombers which slipped under the radar screen to stage nuisance raids designed to damage civilian morale were becoming a problem for seaside towns like Bexhill.

One part of the solution was an alarm system which differed from the ordinary air raid siren - the "cuckoo" warning, so called because of its distinctive sound.

Jessie (right) says: "My colleague and I were returning to duty about 4.40pm. The 'Cuckoo' warning was in force, but we were so used to it then that we were not worried.

"Suddenly we heard the roar of a low-flying plane over the hospital.

"It was a German fighter, flames spitting from its fuselage and sort of 'pinging' around us.

"We threw ourselves to the ground in sheer terror.

"The noise cleared - we realised we were still alive and dashed up the steps to the front door to find Matron standing there.

"'Well, you are both alright. Go and change your aprons before reporting to the wards.'

"And that was it."

Again, it was the humour not the horror that Jessie recalls of the night the hospital was bombed.

"I was on night duty when a stick of bombs straddled the hospital. Night Sister had done her round. I escorted her to the corridor when the roar of returning planes was suddenly accompanied by the whine, crump and explosion of falling bombs.

"I rushed back into the ward to the sounds of shattering glass and voices calling out.

"One voice was shouting 'Don't bury me, I'm not dead yet!'

"I shone my torch and saw that the bed nearest the sluice door was covered in flowers where they had been blown out of the sluice, where we put them at night, by the force of the bombs.

"In the midst of all the chaos, the other nurse, myself and all the other patients roared with laughter...."

Bexhill's was very much "the hospital the town built." In a pre-NHS era, campaigners worked long and hard to achieve their objective. Fund-raising included a buy-a-brick campaign. Volunteers sewed all the bed-linen. The hospital had been opened in 1933 completely free of debt.

Recalling her two tough war-time years there, Jessie says that, having read the history of the hospital, published by the League of Friends to mark's the hospital's golden jubilee in 1983, she now knows

why the staff regime under which she trained as a young woman was so strict.

"...I understand, 64 years on, why we were lectured so strongly on 'no waste' - to switch off all unnecessary lights and throw nothing away."

Young nurses were warned: "The people of Bexhill are paying for this..."

Jessie says: "Bear in mind, we were all young and scared out of our wits most of the time, by the Sisters and Matron - Hitler didn't bother us half as much as the nurse six months senior did.

"He came, bombed, and went - THEY were round every corner.

"I entered Bexhill Hospital on May 6, 1941 and left it two years later, starting a raw, poorly-educated country girl more used to calves and sheep. But by 1943 I was on my way (slowly) to be some use to man and beast - all thanks to those frightening Sisters and Matron."