MARY Campbell was 18 when she started training as a nurse at the old Radcliffe Infirmary in Woodstock Road.

In 1948 the teenager had left her home in south London as the capital was being rebuilt after the Second World War.

Now 87-years-old, Mrs Campbell remembers being one of the first nurses trained under the new National Health Service, which had been formed just months earlier.

She said: “It was wonderful.

“I had a room at my home but not with a wash basin - that was real luxury.

“I didn’t really realise what it meant to have the NHS.

“I might have heard it had started but I didn’t really think about it much.

“I just focused on the patients and I really did thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.”

The matron was a hard task master and kept the trainees on their toes, said Mrs Campbell.

No jewellery or make up was allowed with uniforms consisting of a blue and white dress and starched white apron.

She added: “If we wanted to go to the dance we had to tell matron who we were taking - Matron Preddy, she was very strict but she was a good soul.”

Mrs Campbell spent four years working for the fledgling NHS, first as a staff nurse and then as ward sister at the old Cowley Road Hospital, before becoming the college nurse at Corpus Christi for the remainder of her career, retiring in 2000.

Still, some of her patients while working in the NHS remain with her.

She said: “I remember one patient in particular, Mr Hewitt - he had cancer and there was nothing we could do for him.

“He was so sweet, all we could do was transfer him to the Cowley Road Hospital, which was the end of life hospital.

“I was very sad but a lot of patients were so poorly we couldn’t do a lot for them.”

She added: “I do have many happy memories.

“The NHS enabled me to have a happy and fulfilling career.

“I look back on it with pride and gratitude and always thankful that the NHS I the times I’ve needed it has been there.

“It’s a super organisation.”

Training as a midwife brought Vaughan Haskins to Headington in 1952, after three years of training to become a nurse in Birmingham.

As a 21-year-old, working in Oxford her role brought her into contact with C.S Lewis who was one of the few in Oxford who had their own telephone line.

She said: “Everyone else had a shared line so the operator suggested I ask if I could use his since I was a midwife.

“He was always very pleasant - I didn’t realise he was so famous at the time.”

She had eight villages in her district from south Oxford to Abingdon, forming a close bond with her patients.

She said: “We were midwives and district nurses really.

“I felt they were my patients, from birth to death, I still hear from several of them who now have great-great-grand-children.”

With many patients relying on district nurses and midwives for home visits, the dedicated women of the NHS would endeavour to reach them regardless of the conditions.

The winters in particular proved difficult.

She said: “I remember the bad winter of ‘63.

“It was 2am and I was trying to get up a hill but my car kept sliding back down.

“I remember telling my dog who I had with me that I was scared.

“The man was waiting at the top with a lantern and his wife was in labour, so I tried one more time and eventually we made it.”

She added: “I was on call 24 hours a day for 11 years.

“You just did it.

“You try to help people and that’s why I went into nursing.”