Description
Mrs. Flynn expresses her feelings about the end of war, continuing to care for the wounded, and her thoughts on how the men had to come to terms with their new way of living.
Pauline Flynn
Mrs. Pauline Flynn was born in Port Elgin, Ontario January 23, 1920. Her father was a Canadian Railway Station Master and her mother a school teacher. There are three brothers in her family, she being the only girl. She attended nursing school and in 1938 graduated from Toronto Western. Mrs. Flynn, always having a sense of adventure, decided to join the military. She served as a nursing sister and held the rank of officer. To this day, she holds great pride for the history of the nursing sisters and pride of the blue uniform. After discharge from the service, Mrs. Flynn married and continued to nurse while raising a family in Ottawa. Today, she spends a great deal of her free time volunteering and is very proud of her military connections with other local nursing sisters who served during the same period of time. She is a great spokesperson for the Nursing Sister Association and represents her comrades during many of the Remembrance Day Events in our capital city, Ottawa, Canada.
Transcript
I was on night duty, I can remember that so well and first thing we did was tear off all the, all the windows, of course, were blacked out you know; get all those black curtains out and I remember when the lights, I hadn’t seen lights for so long and the lights came on in that cathedral we looked down through the city and there was the light on the cathedral and some lights on the street. It was, yeah, it was unforgettable. And also people forget that the wounded boys were of course ecstatic for a day or two but they suddenly realized I’m going home, you know, without an arm or going home without a leg or shrapnel still in or half a face gone. Along with elation was a lot of deep thinking, “What am I going to do now? ”