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I was orphaned the first year of the war and not long out of Convent High School, I left the tiny Cheshire village where I was born and enlisted in the Auxiliary Territorial Service at the height of the blitz on Liverpool and Manchester in May 1941
I was excused normal basic training including marching end scrubbing floors at the ATS Depot in Lancaster I was sent as a ‘direct entrant’ to Royal Signals Headquarters in North Wales to live and work with less than one hundred other volunteers in the comfort and luxury of a newly built holiday camp. My enrolment took less than half an hour as I changed from civilian clothes into uniform and became W/5612l Volunteer Lucy Flood, ATS.
Hours of duty were long and arduous, particularly during the night when we sat alone in HQ by the telephone taking down SECRET messages in code which had to be passed on to the Duty Officer, usually asleep in his bunk.
Weekends were spent in full battle order setting up an alternative HQ in the surrounding hills due to the invasion of Prestatyn by the Germans. Sheltering from the cold in stone sheep pens we ate lamb stew ladled into our mess tins from a steaming cauldron and slept on the floor of the local pub after the Saturday night regulars had departed.

Conscription for women came into force during 1943 and I faced up to the harsh realities of Army life at an Ammunition Depot near Shrewsbury. Here the girls were employed assembling shells and packing ammunition in underground bunkers; they were big and tough and they swore, smoked and drank like the men. Two were known as ‘Lesbians’ but still the naive convent girl I thought they had come from a hot country and slept together to keep themselves warm. CAD Nesscliff was in the heart of the Shropshire countryside so several of us bought second-hand bicycles for ten shillings each and pedalled our way to the nearby farms where we discovered hand some Italian prisoners of war working on the land. In broken English they told us they had not wanted to fight the British and when they serenaded us with Italian love songs we found it difficult not to believe them.

By 1944 we were now in Leicester with the Royal Engineers and billeted in requisitioned property, stately houses with panelled walls and leadlight windows. My room had a rooftop window and on the 17th September that year I witnessed the vast armada of planes and gliders crossing the early morning sky; part of Operation ‘Market Garden’ they were carrying paratroopers on their ever glorious but ill-fated trip to Arnham.
On to London and the nightmare of the pilotless planes (doodle bugs) followed by V2 rockets. Without warning a direct hit robbed us of eight girls one fateful afternoon.
Working in the Survey Section of War Office I was one of seven hundred and fifty volunteers from all over the U.K. interviewed for service in the Far East. Just twenty one of us were selected.

In 1945 I was posted to Mullers Orphanage in Bristol for mobilization. Inoculated, vaccinated, briefed and issued with full tropical kit but destination kept secret.
We shared the orphanage with hundreds of black American soldiers who had left their homes and families to fight for our freedom against the Nazis in Germany and were preparing to return to America. We were strictly forbidden to acknowledge them in any way and even a few minutes conversation with them, if discovered, meant immediate return to our home units.
We sailed under strict military security from Liverpool as first class passengers on Canadian Pacific cruise liner Empress of Scotland. Three weeks VIP treatment, blue skies and hot sunshine. A lone palm tree on the horizon eventually signalled our approach to land and we hove to off the coast of Ceylon. To avoid any risk of encountering Japanese submarines or mines and thus endangering the lives of thousands of service men on board, the troopship did not dock in Colombo harbour but anchored out in the bay. Carrying full kit we went over the side of the ship, one hand clutching the rope ladder and a perilous descent to the landing craft below. Greeted on the quayside at Colombo by war correspondents and press photographers, being the first Company of ATS to arrive in South East Asia.
Fairy-tale journey by slow moving troop train up to 3000 ft. in the hills of Kandy to hutted jungle camp. Welcomed by excited natives who gazed at us in wide-eyed wonderment as they placed garlands of sweet smelling blossom round our necks.
Life in our hillside camp with native women as servants. Animals everywhere; large elephants moving trees, baby ones wandering into our quarters for tit-bits. Snakes, lizards and chipmunks became our daily visitors. Down below in the valley dark-skinned men chanted their weird tunes as they worked ankle deep in water, cultivating the paddy fields and slapping the hides of the bullocks which pulled their primitive ploughs. We fell asleep each night under delicate mosquito nets listening to the throbbing of drums in the distant jungle, sending their message across the hilltops of this beautiful island.
Working for Lord Louis Mountbatten at Supreme Headquarters, South East Asia, discreetly erected among the exotic blooms of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kandy. Completing OPERATION ZIPPER - final plan for re-occupation of Singapore and Malaya from the Japanese.
Atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrendered. In spite of the terrible tortures inflicted on the allied prisoners of war, when shown the devastation caused by these bombs I felt a little ashamed to be British.
Five ATS girls, including myself, were on the first troopship from Ceylon to Singapore - no luxury cruise this time. As the Devonshire left Colombo we were squeezed into one tiny cabin on D Deck next to the engine room and just above the water line. The ship was crammed with troops, the heat and stench unbearable but the voyage should take only five days; it took eight. Singapore was not ready for us so the ship anchored in the bay for seventy-two hours. Just two degrees off the equator, stationary in the blistering heat, we waited in our sweat soaked brassieres and panties sharing one small porthole and praying for a waft of fresh air.

By 1946 I was working for Lord Louis Mountbatten at his new Headquarters in the splendid Cathay Building with its own cinema, ballroom and restaurant. Here we helped collate and type the history of the Allied Prisoners of War who had suffered under the Japanese, many tortured to death on the infamous Burma/Siam railway.
We all made friends with Dutch, Malayan and Chinese families and I was invited to be godmother to the first-born grandson of the well-known Yee Cheok Wah, owner of’ the famous Atomic Club. There was a Christian Baptism in Singapore Cathedral followed by a traditional Chinese Banquet. The Superintendant of Police who was godfather later betrayed Yee Cheok Wah for trading in black market whisky and was alleged to have been found in the jungle with a knife in his back.
We were stranded on tiny island for two days with the rest of General Sir Reginald Denning’s office staff. The sole inhabitants were a very old Chinese man and wife who understood not one word of English. The only shelter from the scorching sun was a small Temple built on wooden stilts, sunk deep into the coral reef and full of hideous masks, grinning gargoyles and long-bladed knives.
Keeping a ‘special’ date our jeep was strafed by lightning in a freak tropical storm and carried away by the force of black swirling water when canals and rivers overflowed. Saved from certain drowning in the inky darkness by my companion, a British Officer in the Royal Ghurka Rifles who later became my husband of fifty-three years.
In 1947 Lord Mountbatten returned to England prior to becoming Viceroy of India. We finished our military service in the peacetime head quarters at Fort Canning where our office was frequently used by members of the Combined Services Entertainment, including the late Kenneth Williams, appearing in the musical ‘High and Low’ at the Victoria Theatre, Singapore.
We sailed from Singapore for the U.K. In June l947 on the notorious troopship RANCHI, we were unbelievably crammed with troops, civilian wives, young children, Asian brides and six ATS. Two of us gave up our over-crowded cabin space to a couple of very pregnant Chinese girls, both married to British service men, and wearing our khaki drill slacks and shirts we slept on deck as far as Gibraltar. This meant getting up very early to avoid being hosed down by the Lascars who swabbed the decks at dawn. I worked my passage home selling souvenirs and sweets in the barber’s shop for which I received the handsome sum of thirty shillings at the end of three week’s trip.
We became rather bored with the constant attention paid to us by a certain dark haired young man with an Australian accent who said he was coming to England to be a film star. We did not believe him for one minute and In fact we treated him quite badly. But he did become a film star - a famous one - and I was full of remorse when in later years I recognised him on screen as the late PETER FINCH!
The RANCHI stopped for a whole day at Port Said where natives swarmed the decks selling bric-a-brac and young boys dived deep down into the sea for coins thrown overboard.
We had a welcome three days break In MALTA GC while the ship’s engine was repaired and saw for ourselves the extensive damage caused by the German bombers to this gallant island fortress,
Back on board ship once again we felt a distinct chill in the air as we sailed ever nearer to the U.K.
In the early hours of 4th July 1947 we awoke to a tearing, grating noise which to our sleepy minds sounded like two ships in collision.
Drilled and disciplined to the last we raced to lifeboat stations clad only in ATS flannel pyjamas and life jackets to find we had just dropped anchor in the English Channel due to dense fog.
The following day, our travels over and proud to have served our King and country we docked in the peaceful waters of Southampton.

W/5612l Staff Sergeant Lucy Flood, ATS

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