A series of short biographies of women and men who served as ambulance drivers and assistants in Chelsea, London, during the Second World War.
Elizabeth Carrington, born in 1917, sister of Baron Carrington of Upton (Lord Carrington, who served under Thatcher in the 80s), drove for the LCC Ambulance Service (London Auxiliary Ambulance Service or LAAS) in 1939. She is listed as living at 50-61 Burton Court in Chelsea.
Elizabeth did not stay long in the LAAS. She joined the Mechanised Transport Corps (a civilian uniformed organisation that provided drivers for government departments and other agencies and drove ambulances) and was attached to the American Ambulance. This service was set up after the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 by Gilbert H. Carr and raised £140,000 from US citizens in London alone. The fund purchased 300 vehicles (ambulances, surgical units and first aid mobile posts and had nearly 400 British women working for them.
In 1943 Elizabeth Carrington married William Lionel Dove, a Liverpool GP serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps. She died in Liverpool in 2004.
Under Fire: The Blitz Diaries of a Volunteer Ambulance Driver
“A writer who does their research so thoroughly and then wears their learning so lightly”
“Fabulous blend of diary accounts and social history”
The Blitz in London through the diaries of a volunteer ambulance driver, from dancing at the Grosvenor to incendiary bombs in the roof
In the summer of 1940 June Spencer volunteers for the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service in Chelsea. Every night she writes up the day’s events in her diary, whether it’s driving in a hail of incendiaries, peeling potatoes for the crews, or loading broken and bleeding …
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