Colour photograph of seven young people standing around items of camping equipment that are laid out on a blanket in a field. Behind them are two tents.

Marjorie Riley (née McGovern)

Joined 1946

Dewsbury Cadet Nursing Division, West Yorkshire

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Black and white photograph of male and female Cadets in uniform standing to attention in a field. They are being spoken to by a group of adult males in uniform.
Cadet Inspection at the international Coronation Camp held at Stubbers in Essex, 1953 Image courtesy of the Museum of the Order of St John
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Transcript

There was no residential courses in those days, but I did go to national camp in 1953, which was a Coronation camp in London. We couldn’t get over it because it was in such a lovely surroundings and you walked down an avenue with trees on both sides and that’s something I’ll always remember, and you met many friends there. We had a First Aid competition you could enter. We had a nursing competition and there was always some kind of competition every day.

I enjoyed being the Area Cadet Officer and I arranged a lot of different competitions. We always had a football for the boys and the girls had netball. We worked as an area more then than we did when I was an Officer. We had a camp, we went to camp. We went to a few camps. It was a job I liked because I was in contact with more people and I got plenty of help from Cadet Officers at that time.

To begin with, we went to a house that belonged to Huddersfield Council and we decided that we liked that, but we would prefer to go and camp and we went to Semerwater, which was miles from anywhere, but the Cadets seemed to like that because they could do what they want. They could make as much noise as they wanted and we did all sorts of things there. We were there for a week. We always had a trip out and we went there a few years.

Excerpt courtesy of Marjorie Riley