Reader's nose for a happy memory? (From Gazette Series)

Reader's nose for a happy memory?

SIR - The ex-nurse that wrote a book on The Vindi Boys (Gazette, December 5), I could elaborate on, having worked years ago at the small Employment Exchange on the docks at Sharpness.

I used to take the claims of the young men who wanted to go in the Merchant Navy (for a few years) and it was interesting indeed. Many lads came from poor areas like Bootle in Liverpool and sometimes they positively smelt. I used to tell the instructors at the Vindi camp and they would quickly get them into a bath.

One boy I remember was a cartoonist for Walt Disney, but he had an urge to go to sea. They were paid 25 shillings a week but after paying their keep were left with ten shillings.

Thousands of the counties' money went on them for a periods of years until one day an inspector came and, because to claim unemployment benefit then you had to be available for work, the whole office was disbanded, but I had left by then. They were, of course, never available for work. Unbelievable really.

Then the lovely old ship, the Vindicatrix, which had been a German ship many years before, went to Gravesend, I believe.

Anyway, they were an amusing lot, whistling at all the pretty girls at that time. One day (when I was about 13) my mother and I were cycling to Berkeley cinema and they started singing "They're either too young or too old" etc, a song of that time. Hilarious it was!

Anyway, a little interesting addition to what has already been written.

Jennifer Workman, Cambridge Avenue, Dursley

Editor's note: The book, by Rona Coe, of The Croft, was an autobiographical account of her time as a nursing auxiliary in Berkeley Hospital along with an account of the Vindicatrix training ship that used to be docked in Sharpness.