She never sought plaudits and remained a very private person, but it made her very happy to know that she brought such pleasure to so many readers, while herself gaining a quiet joy from spinning her stories. She was always amazed and touched that her books were so widely appreciated. To her millions of fans around the world, Betty Neels epitomized romance. She was always quite firm upon the point that the Dutch doctors who frequently appeared in her stories were *not* based upon her husband, but rather upon an amalgam of several of the doctors she met while nursing in Holland. Her first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and by dint of often writing four books a year, she eventually completed 134 books. There was little in Betty's background to suggest that she might eventually become a much-loved novelist. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind had no intention of vegetating, and her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. When they decided to return to England, Betty continued her nursing and when she eventually retired she had reached the position of night superintendent.īetty Neels began writing almost by accident. The small family lived in Holland for 13 years, and Betty resumed her nursing career there. As his family had believed he had died when his ship went down, this was a very emotional homecoming. When the war finally ended, she and her husband were repatriated to Holland. As with most of the population, they made the best of things. They were posted to London, but were bombed out. They eventually married, and were blessed with a daughter. Sadly he became ill, and that was when he was transferred to hospital in Northern Ireland, where he met Betty. They stole a ship and managed to get it across the Channel to Dover before being transferred to the Atlantic run on the convoys. However, when they had to abandon their post, they were told to escape if they could, and along with a small number of other men, he marched into Belgium. He survived and was sent to the south of Holland to guard the sluices. He was a seaman aboard a minesweeper, which was bombed. But Betty's war didn't end there, for she was posted to Scotland, and then on to Northern Ireland, where she met her Dutch husband. They were incredibly fortunate to be put on the last hospital ship to be leaving the port of Boulogne. This comprised eight nursing sisters, including Betty, to 100 men! In other circumstances, she thought that might have been quite thrilling! When France was invaded in 1940, all the nursing sisters managed to escape in the charge of an army major, undertaking a lengthy and terrifying journey to Boulogne in an ambulance. In 1939 she was called up to the Territorial Army Nursing Service, which later became the Queen Alexandra Reserves, and was sent to France with the Casualty Clearing Station. She was sent away to boarding school, and then went on to train as a nurse, gaining her SRN and SCM, that is, State Registered Nurse and State Certificate of Midwifery. She said she had a blissfully happy childhood and teenage years.(This stood her in good stead later for the tribulations to come with the Second World War). Betty Neels was born on Septemin Devon to a family with firm roots in the civil service.
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