Rachel Millet

A personal account of
the Hadfield-Spears Ambulance
Unit
1940-1945

Fern House
1998

When the Second World War broke out Rachel Millet (née Howell-Evans), a qualified children's nurse, was head matron at a boys' preparatory school. France fell, and she decided to join the Mechanised Transport Corps as a driver. Hearing that the Hadfield-Spears Hospital --- somewhere in the Middle East with the Free French forces --- needed drivers, she applied and was accepted.

Spearette (the French nickname for a Hadfield-Spears girl) tells the story of Rachel Millet's adventures as driver and nurse with the Hospital. Having travelled across the desert with the Eighth Army, and through Italy, she became an honorary Commando to land on the south coast of France preparatory to the main invasion.

Spearette is an intensely immediate and exciting story, with a distressing ending as the petulant General de Gaulle peremptorily ordered the Hospital to be disbanded because the crowds at the Paris Victory Parade dared to cheer: 'Vive Spears!'

                 CONTENTS

1. Joining the Circus
2. El Alamein
3. Life in the Desert
4. The Longest Convoy Drive
5. Victory in North Africa
6. Return to Tunisia
7. On to Italy
8. Across the Garigliano River
9. To Rome and the Vatican
10. The Great Adventure
11. Arrival in France
12. Forward Unit to Lyons
13. Lyons
14. Home Leave
15. Alsace
16. The Last Battle

work under copyright
copies may be available at:

AB BF