A midwife who has been helping on the Poland-Ukraine border for more than two years has reflected on the work she had done so far.

Wendy Warrington, from Tottington, first took unpaid leave from her job as an NHS specialist safeguarding midwife to volunteer on the border for three weeks in March 2022, a month after Russia invaded Ukraine.

She is a mum-of-three and grandmother-of-six.

Wendy said: "I just couldn't look at those scenes of the war and do nothing.

"What's happened to the Ukrainian refugees in Poland resonated with me.

"I remembered what happened to my family."

Wendy's family were refugees too – her grandfather survived Auschwitz and, after the war, gave evidence against the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials.

Her parents settled in Bury and helped build the Polish club for the Polish community.

After her first stint, Wendy went further later in 2022, taking a six-month career break and moving to Poland, with husband Simon, to deliver humanitarian aid and maternity supplies into Ukraine, including 20 incubators.

They're still there today, and she never returned to her job in the UK.

She has dipped into her pension funds so she can stay in Poland and continue her work in Ukraine, returning to the UK to lecture at universities.

New Forest for Ukraine is a charity that creates baby boxes for newborns (Image: New Forest For Ukraine) Wendy said: "I came across Przemysl, a city just 15 kilometres from the Ukraine border, and a gateway for refugees to escape into Poland."

Wendy found that the mayor of Przemysl had converted a disused shopping centre into a makeshift refugee centre.

She said: "I contacted the mayor and asked if I could help, as I was a midwife and spoke Polish.

"'We welcome you with open arms,' I was told.

"So, there I was, living in a school dormitory and doing 12-hour shifts, seven days a week.

"But I promised my family I wouldn't cross into Ukraine."

It was a promise that Wendy did not keep.

She added: "But I didn't tell them, at first.

"I met a Polish paramedic volunteer who asked me if I wanted to help take aid to a children's hospital in Lviv and I said 'OK'.

"After that I helped evacuate children and people with cancer.

"I went over the border to collect them, acting as their medical support."

At first, Wendy tried to help people who were young and old, but she now concentrates on the babies.

She gets a lot of support from a Hampshire-based charity called New Forest for Ukraine (NFFU) who, in two years, have sent more than 370 metric tonnes of aid to Ukraine.

She said: "John Allison, who's the chief co-ordinator at NFFU, reached out to me.

"They create baby boxes full of essentials for newborns, and asked me if we could distribute them.

"I take pictures and film clips to show people who have donated what happens when I give out the baby boxes.

"The Ukrainian mums love them.

"Doctors and midwives tear up when they are distributed."

"Even one knitted blanket or matinee jacket means an awful lot to people in such desperate need."