Conversation with a Ninety Year Old Woman

At some point, I thought I should start taking notes, otherwise I wouldn't remember anything of what she was saying. This is what I managed to put together from those notes. It's not a nice story - not all of it - and it's a bit confused because she is ninety years old and was talking to me for over an hour.

When her husband came back at the end of World War 2, he was in a 'right old state', weighing six and a half stone, even though he was well over six foot. He had been captured by the Germans -somewhere near Russia? With Russians? He was put on some kind of death-march. Very, very cold   - no boots and no cover. They slept in the snow. He had had enough, and begged the German officer; 'do me a favour, shoot me'. The Officer nodded and walked away. He was left in the snow, and thought he would die there, beneath the white, and found when the snow thawed. The people in a nearby cottage gave him soup and saved him. He was sent to an Italian prisoner of war camp, but the S.S came to pick him up. He didn't know where he was sent, but in his cell there was only 'a shelf' to sleep on. The S.S would come to torture the prisoners. They would hear the boots come along the corridor, and all the prisoners would pray don't let it be me, don't let it be me, and if the boots went by the cell, they knew it would be someone else's turn, and he would feel guilty, because he felt that he had wished it on them. She said that her husband talked of 'hooks' and 'screaming'. She said that she felt 'someone' was watching over her husband, for the S.S then took him to work at a flour mill, where they stole what food they could. He was then sent to another P.O.W camp 'full of cut-throats' who would 'kill you for nothing'. He befriended an ex-sailor, who warned him 'not to go in the cubbyhole' because the prisoners would kill him. They heard rumours that the allies were coming. There was some kind of revolt, and they (the prisoners) grabbed the guards rifles, and 'got the guards strung up - hung them with barbed wire'. She said that her husband refused to talk about what else had happened. There were Americans at the gate of the P.O.W camp, but the prisoners seemed to have gone insane and 'were shooting people left, right and centre'. When he returned to England he 'suffered dreadful nightmares' and 'gradually, his mind went'. He would attack her. 'He thought I was a German' she said 'and I would hold him and say 'it's alright Fred, I won't let them touch you'. While she was trying to care for her husband, she was also caring for her blind mother who lived around the corner. She found herself in a 'right old state'.
She talked more, about her life as a spiritual healer (and despite what one thinks about spiritual healing, her descriptions of her experience were lucid and fascinating). She said she 'worked for Churchill' during World War 2, though in what capacity she wasn't clear on, and whether she meant literally or figuratively I wasn't able to tell. She said that she was housebound now, and couldn't really walk and says that her 'days just hang... you can't do anything, you can't go anywhere... it drags...' Written down, it sounds like Hell without hope, but she also spoke about her plans for her ninetieth birthday, and her children, and a trip she recently - comparatively - took to Gambia - 'I had never flown in an aeroplane before'.
I wished had taken more notes - what notes I did scrawl are quite illegible - and I wish I could have talked to her for longer. 'If there's anything you want to do' she said 'just do it, don't wait, because time passes by'.