Vbuxs (Cc <2 i PHOTO SUBMITTED This photo was taken in 1941 in front of the military hospital in Kingston before Dorothy (Osborne) Howes went to the front lines. i helmets over our faces to prevent the shrapnel from coming through in case of an air raid," recalls Howes. Bathrooms were a seven-holer in the fields, she notes, with sack clothes as screens. "There was no door and no roof to those bathrooms. Then you'd be sitting in there when airplanes, with our boys in them, would be coming back from Germany. To add to the fun, sometimes they would be doing what they called Howe! r°ar right °Ver °Ur heads'" IauShs When it rained, one had to go and use the bathrooms armed with an umbrella Later, new bathrooms with roofs were built further across the fields "One night, three of us needed to use the bathrooms at night. So we conferred on which one to head for - with roof or without roof. We settled on the first As we walked in the dark, two of us suddenly fell into a trench. It was very dark. The other friend yelled out our names and when we answered from the trench she asked us what we were doing down there, as though we were having a ball in the muddy trench. Then we struggled up from the trench and went on our way to the bathroom," she remembers. Her voice softens as she remembers the relentlessness of her responsibilities as a front-line nurse. "I had 72 patients to look after When some of them are well enough they would be flown to England and then first thing you get is a fresh bunch in " The war was not just in the battlefield she said. "It was all over. People's homes were entered in the middle of the night The ones that were left got up and went on with their lives the next morning. When the war was over there were always these people at the station waiting to see if any of their people would come back home," she said On May 8, 1945, the war was finally over but Howes was still there in Belgium "When I came home, people said 'I bet you celebrated' and I laughed and I said ' you know I could walk out on 72 on my ward and celebrate " Howes returned to nursing in Ontario. After her marriage to a Quinte resident, Harold Howes, whom she had known since childhood, she settled down in rS ̂ SW?6- She Was Panted with aCanada 125 Medal in 1992 for her community work Today much as she would love to, her arthritis- !£S? knees would not allow her to beabout doing community work. M bsangma@hot- with comments or story, ideas for Remember When. t* , , , , , , , ( ;• •-• - - r ' ' < : ' ; ••