A RETIRED nurse has revealed the secret behind her long life as she celebrated her 103rd birthday.

Wrexham-born Hilda Richards now lives at Pendine Park’s Gwern Alyn care home where she reached the special milestone age.

She was born in Ruabon during the First World War on November 10, 1917.

After attending grammar school, she moved to Liverpool aged 18 to train as a nurse at Alder Hey Hospital. She completed her training in 1940 and treated people injured by the war and in the Blitz, as well as Jewish doctors who escaped the Nazis.

Hilda recalled: “Looking after gravely wounded soldiers from Dunkirk was an awful job, but one I was privileged to do. These boats came in carrying all these wounded soldiers on stretchers who had come straight from Dunkirk.

“They looked like old men when they came in, but once we’d washed their faces and cleaned them up, we could see they were just boys, some as young as 20.

“We were doing that for two whole days, just cleaning them all up. I’ll tell you something, we nurses were crying as we were doing it.”

Hilda recalls living a “very varied” but enjoyable life and proudly says she has “no regrets”.

In 1942, Hilda attended a carnival dance where she watched the dancers from a balcony with her friend and spotted a young man leaning on the railings – this later turned out to become her future husband Trevor.

She said: “There was an empty seat next to mine on the balcony, so I offered him the seat next to me. We got talking and he told me he’d just come back from Blackpool with his brother and their friend, who were downstairs dancing.

“But, like me, he couldn’t dance, so he came upstairs to watch. That’s how we met, and he started writing letters to me while I was at Alder Hey.”

Trevor worked at the Cranes music shop in Wrexham, as a pianist and a salesman, before he served in France in the Tank Regiment.

They married later that year during one of his leave weeks – which he got every four months – and Hilda moved to Wrexham Infirmary where she continued to treat soldiers.

Hilda later worked as a laboratory assistant and a first aid nurse at a school, before retiring aged 59.

The couple travelled the world, from North America to India, Russia and even the North Pole.

Hilda said: “Any money we had left over of our weekly pension would go in our travel savings box. When we had enough, we’d decide where to go, and off we went.

“Mine and Trevor’s motto was ‘memories are better than dreams.’ That’s what we used to say.

“Sitting by the fire when you’re old, you don’t want to see a place on the TV and think ‘I wish I had been there.’ You want to be able to say, ‘Oh, I remember when I went there.’”

Her travel highlight is visiting the Taj Mahal and sitting in the same spot made famous by Princess Diana in later years.

Hilda and Trevor had three sons - Ralph, now 73, Derek, 70, and Clive, 54.

Trevor died ten years ago and Hilda, who has four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, moved into the care home earlier this year.

Hilda marked her special occasion by tucking into an afternoon tea and a birthday cake with staff and residents from the care home.

At the party, she said that she always had “a tot of Bell’s whisky” in her morning cup of tea and credits that ritual for her long life.

Whilst pointing to the sky, she joked that another reason was that “He doesn’t want me up there. I’m too wicked!”

Gwern Alyn manager Cindy Clutton added: “Hilda is a truly remarkable woman and has a real zest for life. She is very popular with the staff and residents alike, not least because she still has a mischievous sense of humour.

“It is really humbling to hear about all she has done particularly during time working as a nurse.

“Hilda is a real inspiration to all of us and it is a real privilege to be able to look after her.”