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Alan Rolfe
"Now in those days, even houses like this all had a resident maid. And
ours was called Bessie. She was a big tough girl. And she got the flu. And
I never, always remember, she was carried out on a stretcher. 'Goodbye
all, don't forget to bring me my new hat'. That was the last we saw of
her. That evening I said to my mother 'I don't - ', this was in November,
just before the war ended, in 1918, 'I don't feel very well'. My sister,
'neither do I'. We went down with it. We were both terribly ill, and
father came over from France to see us. And he thought he'd never see us
again. And when we recovered, mother 'oh dear, I must, poor Bessie, I must
go and see her in the infirmary'. So she rushed round with a bunch of
flowers. 'Oh madam, Miss Smith has died'. And it wasn't until that moment,
she hadn't realised how gravely ill we'd been, you know, she was so busy
looking after us. And then it wasn't until that that she found, you know,
the statistics, thousands of people were dying, all over the world
actually."
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