“rhese frightful “ieces of flesh had once been living, breathing people”
NAME: Frances Faviell AGE IN 1940: 34 JOB: Artist and nurse
Well oʘ, living in Chelsea, working as an artist: (rances seemed to have life sorted. But the Blitz turned her world completely upside down.
She trained as a volunteer nurse, along with her housekeeper, and they took turns to pretend to be wounded. “It did seem ridiculous to have to lie flat on a piece of marked pavement pretending to be a casualty,” she recalled.
But as (rances listened to wireless reports of the war’s progress, she began to feel a new seriousness. “I could listen in my beautiful room surrounded by comfort and with a good meal waiting downstairs,” she wrote, “but I could not eat.”
#s the Blitz continued, (rances became increasingly committed to her new vocation, taking on eZtraordinarily challenging duties – not least piecing together the broken bodies of the dead in preparation for burial. “It was a very diʛcult task,” she recalled. “There were so many pieces missing… the stench was the worst thing about it – that, and having to realise that these frightful pieces of flesh had once been living, breathing people. We went out to smoke cigarettes when we simply could not go on.”
By the time of the penultimate big raid on London in #pril 1941, (rances was living with her second husband, Richard Parker, and was four months pregnant. Her house was hit, but she was able to crawl out of its smoking ruins – and her son, ,ohn Parker, is still alive today.