Brave Ethnee Wallace may be a frail 90-year-old, but she can remember her days as a wartime 999 heroine like yesterday.
Ethnee's eyes turn to steel when she recalls the longest shift when she and colleagues ferried the wounded and dead from one of Tyneside's worst disasters in the Blitz.
Ethnee, then an Air Raid Precaution ambulance driver, says she will never forget the night 105 people were killed and dozens more injured when a shelter took a direct hit.
Tomorrow, 62 years after the disaster, a plaque is being erected in memory of the dead and emergency services who raced to Wilkinson's Lemonade Factory in North Shields in May 1941.

Miss Wallace from Tynemouth said: "People today simply cannot imagine what it was like - but you just had to get on with your job.
"It was a terrible night but there were a lot of terrible nights.
"All the boys were sent off to fight the war and the women were expected to join in with essential war work.
"I had to look after my mother because my father had just died and I wanted to stay on Tyneside, so I joined the ARP Civil Defence in 1939.
"Our ambulance base was on North Shields Fish Quay, near the ferry terminal, and we had shifts of 10 women who would drive the ambulances.
"The ambulances were Rolls Royces but they were terrible things to drive - the gearstick was so low down.
"We had two alerts - a standby and one for imminent danger. On the night Wilkinson's went up the sirens sounded and we heard a gigantic shudder.
"A shift could last 9am to 1am so when you weren't working you slept. I wasn't on duty but we all dashed to the ambulance station.
"The rescue men went in and tried to shield us from the worst work - shifting the bodies, but we ferried backwards and forwards taking them to the mortuary and the wounded to hospital. We worked flat out for a week. There were awful sights, but you had to concentrate on the task in hand.
"We ferried people like they were bundles to the mortuary in Church Way. I remember people had also been killed in other parts of North Shields.
"The police wanted to know how I'd got backwards and forwards faster than anyone else. I'd been using a street that was supposed to be sealed off from an unexpected bomb.
"We worked all night and day and they couldn't cope with the amount of funerals that had to be held. The coffins were built in the shipyards.
"In my opinion it was a scandal that building was ever used as a shelter."

After ten days, King George V and Queen Elizabeth - the former Queen Mum - made a secret visit to Tyneside after hearing about the disaster.

Ethnee said: "We were made to draw lots for an "important event" and the winners went down to Prize Park which is where the King's School playing fields are now. A buzz went round that it was the King and Queen.
"I met the Queen and she asked me what we had done and how we'd become such experienced drivers.
"Afterwards I ran home and told my mum to grab her coat. As we raced down the road, a large car drove past.
"I saw the lady speaking to her driver, and it slowed down. The window wound down and there was the King and Queen waving to my mother and I. It was the proudest moment of her life."

Just before midnight on Saturday, May 3 a lone German raider dropped four bombs on North Shields.
One device hit the beach, another hit Stephenson Street and exploded without casualties, a third killed two people at a house in George Street while the fourth hit Wilkinson's.
In all, 192 people had made for the basement shelter when the sirens sounded. Some folk had refused to use it - claiming the heavy machinery overhead rendered it a deathtrap.
Bottling machinery and debris from the upper floors crashed into the cellar, crushing or trapping occupants.
Sadly, Ethnee and two other surviving ambulance women from that night, Anna Young and Betty Walshaw, will be unable to attend the ceremony, outside the Beacon Centre in North Shields when North Tyneside Council, the Veterans Association and North Tyneside Challenge erect the plaque.
Unsung heroine ARV warden Nellie Lee rescued 32 survivors by shoulder-barging an escape route through the rubble. Her son Albert will attend.

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