A FORMER Red Cross volunteer who has travelled the world is celebrating her 100th birthday.

Rosemary Boulter was born in Dorset and at the start of the Second World War she joined the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment.

Rosemary, who lives in Dedham, said: “I wore a big red cross on my apron and had a butterfly cap. First I was sent to a hospital just outside Weymouth. We took everybody connected to the war, Army, Navy, Airforce plus French colonial troops from Senegal.

“One time, the HMS Delight sunk and the survivors were brought in soaking in sea water, black oil and blood.

“We ran out of beds and some of the wounded slept on mattresses on the floor.

“I remember one night when the bombing was bad and I walked through the wards in my butterfly cap and a steel helmet, at its worst there was hardly any time between the raids - all day and all night.”

Gazette:

As well as nursing at the hospital she worked in the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes canteen.

She remembers when her uncle and aunt’s house was bombed when she was 21.

She said: “The house had been blasted, doors and windows gone and ceilings down. It must have been dreadful for my uncle and aunt, they were never able to live in it again.”

After Weymouth she was sent to a hospital in Sherborne before being transferred to the Cambridge Military Hospital.

After the war she completed her SRN nursing qualification, but met husband Bill, who was an army officer, and stopped work to travel with him. They married in 1949 and had three children, Michael, Susan and Sophia, three grandchildren, Rebecca, Emily and Jessica, and two great-grandchildren Archie and Elodie.

Rosemary still enjoys outings for lunch and coffee. She also attends a weekly exercise class at ACE Mill Road Therapy Centre and is the oldest participant.

Having lived by the coast as a child she has always had a love of the sea.

She said: “Big Atlantic rollers thundered in during winter storms, and one of my earliest memories is the sound of them as they crashed on the pebbles. My father used to take me to the top of the beach and watch the sea.

“I have never lost my love of the sea - proper sea with sea cliffs and rocks coves and rocks.”