At the start of World War II Grace Leonard volunteered to be an ambulance driver. This is her story.

Shortly after war was declared in 1939 the council started asking Bristol's motorists if they would volunteer for evening duties as ambulance drivers.

As I was working in an office in Southmead I offered my services for the Clifton area.

I took an obligatory short course in first aid (I still have the certificate) and also a driving test with a Bristol Tramways inspector on the busiest day of the week - market day.

When it was over the inspector made just one remark - "You scuffed the tyres against the kerb as you finally pulled in".

Cycling from my home in Kellaway Avenue, Horfield, to the depot took about half an hour.

One evening, while I was on my way, the air raid siren started, with its frightening wailing tone.

As I was already halfway there I continued on my journey but soon heard the droning sound of bombers.

Looking out over the city I could see it was illuminated like a scene from a pantomime.

The Germans had showered it with Verey lights which meant that a dreadful air raid was to follow.

The next minute a bomber was over my head, spewing tracer bullets along the road.

That was it.

I fell off my bike, threw it into the gutter, ran up the path of a nearby house and stayed there, in the porch, until the 'All Clear' sounded.

The council had requisitioned many large vehicles from local businesses and converted them into ambulances with stretchers and basic equipment.

The vehicles I had to drive were cattle trucks, delivery vans - including laundry vans - and very large vans from the tobacco manufacturers W D & H O Wills.

Wills' vehicles were very difficult in that the large hand brakes had a knob on top which had to be depressed to release the brake.

My poor left thumb was barely strong enough to operate it and I dreaded being allocated these vans.

Once, taking a dozen or so male first aiders to a venue, I got in a panic because on a steep hill, with all that weight, I couldn't release the hand brake.

I eventually managed it, but how on earth we didn't end up rolling backwards, I'll never know.

On one occasion, during an air raid, I was sent out with an assistant to an address at the bottom of Park Street, where someone was trapped in the basement of a building.

I dropped my assistant off and then looked for somewhere to park.

Now, before I left the depot I had been told not to park near the Cathedral as there was an unexploded bomb there.

Shops and houses were on fire and the scene was chaotic, with fire engines clanging their bells and acrid smoke thick in the air.

There being nowhere else I ignored my instructions and parked outside the Cathedral.

Within minutes an incendiary bomb came whizzing out of the sky and I clearly remember clutching on to my steel helmet and praying, "Please Lord, don't let it hit me".

I was sent out during many more horrendous blitzes.

Many shops were razed to the ground and some houses just vanished, as did most of the city's beautiful historic buildings.

The Good Friday, 1941, raid was the severest I experienced with fires raging in Clifton.

Even with the windows closed in the ambulance, I could feel the intense heat of the blaze as I drove along Queens Road.

I arrived back at the depot with a face the colour of a lobster.

The next morning, in broad daylight, the devastation was unimaginable, with clothing hitched up in the trees where it had been blown by the blasts, sights that will stay with me forever.

When I enlisted in the ATS and left Bristol my colleagues at the depot presented me with a green leather writing-case.

I later "lent" it to my brother Harold whose job in the RAF was to service the electronics on heavy aircraft.

One day he put it on the wing of a Lancaster bomber and forgot all about it.

I guess that writing case flew off into eternity.

I spent the remainder of the war, all four years of it, as part of the 6th Glosters (Clerical) Company at the Southern Command HQ in Salisbury.

But that, as they say, is another story.