Black and white image of three people standing in front of a striped tent. On the tent is a sign that reads Information Bureau and Recruiting Centre. The person on the left is a nurse in uniform, wearing a white pinafore over a dress and a white headscarft. The person is the centre is a young boy in a Cadet uniform of shorts and shirt. The person on the right is a man in a black suit and hat. He is carrying a communication device on his back.

Freda Pickard

Joined 1942

Dewsbury Cadet Nursing Division, West Yorkshire

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Black and white photograph of a young woman looking directly at the camera. She wears a nursing Cadet uniform including a white nursing cap and white cuffs.
Nursing Cadet Freda Pickard, c.1944 Image courtesy of Freda Pickard
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Transcript

The war was on, in 1942, and the war was on, and so we were encouraged to join an organisation, and if we didn’t we would be directed to join something. So I saw it in the paper that the Nursing Cadets was going to be formed in Dewsbury. I didn’t know – I knew that there was the ambulance people, but then there was nothing about the youngsters. And so two of us went on the Saturday afternoon. They didn’t want us meeting in the night-time because of the air raids, and it was a blackout you see, things were blacked out. So we met on the Saturday afternoon, and that’s how I found out about the St John.

Well I always wanted to go nursing. And my mother had a poor experience in the First World War with her friends who went nursing, and she couldn’t forget that. So she said, no I couldn’t go nursing. So I obeyed. You did in those days, you didn’t object. And so then when the Nursing Cadets were formed, I thought, well I’m still at home, so I joined. I think she thought I was going to be sent abroad. My father joked and said, “It will do her good.”

Excerpt courtesy of Freda Pickard