Literary event – Joyce’s War
Rhiannon Evans gave us an amazing talks about how she found her mother’s war journals and turned them into a book. Her mother Joyce Ffoulkes Parry was a Queen Alexandria nurse during WW2 and travelled via ship to Africa, the Middle East and India to tend the wounded. The journals not only told of Joyce’s work but also what everyday life was like for nurses during the war. Photos illustrated her life including the heavy formal uniforms they were required to wear, even in the tropics! It was a very hot evening and it was easy to imagine what life would have been like on the troop ship although thankfully we were only listening for an evening, not weeks in those conditions. Despite the heat, Rhiannon held our attention as she re-created the journey of her mother’s war from these forgotten diaries.