Interview with Sydney Smith
Title
Interview with Sydney Smith
Description
Sydney’s father died when she was a baby. Her mother remarried and had another daughter and son. The son became ground crew in the Royal Air Force.
Sydney lived a few miles from London and attended Byron Court School in Webley. She was five when war broke out and eleven when it ended. She remembered the Battle of Britain and hundreds of aircraft taking off for Germany. A lot of Sydney’s school days were spent in the air raid shelters. From an early age she decided she wanted to work for the Air Force. Sydney started her nursing training in 1951 with the National Health Service and in 1956 she joined the Air Force for four years short commission. She recollects her posts at RAF Hospital Nocton Hall, Hook of Holland and then in Germany. When Sydney married she had to leave the Air Force, which she loved. Her husband worked for the Metropolitan Police. She donated her nurse’s uniform to Hendon museum.
Sydney lived a few miles from London and attended Byron Court School in Webley. She was five when war broke out and eleven when it ended. She remembered the Battle of Britain and hundreds of aircraft taking off for Germany. A lot of Sydney’s school days were spent in the air raid shelters. From an early age she decided she wanted to work for the Air Force. Sydney started her nursing training in 1951 with the National Health Service and in 1956 she joined the Air Force for four years short commission. She recollects her posts at RAF Hospital Nocton Hall, Hook of Holland and then in Germany. When Sydney married she had to leave the Air Force, which she loved. Her husband worked for the Metropolitan Police. She donated her nurse’s uniform to Hendon museum.
Creator
Publisher
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
2018-07-25
Contributor
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
00:33:27 audio recording
Language
Type
Identifier
ASmithS180725, PSmithS1801
Conforms To
Spatial Coverage
Collection
Citation
David Kavanagh, “Interview with Sydney Smith,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed August 3, 2021, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/11663.
Item Relations
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