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Mrs Miriam De Garis (née Falla) interviewed by Becky Kendall of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Guernsey at the Guernsey Museum, March 2005, The recording transcribed and edited by John David November 2005

I’m eighty-two, and I was seventeen when we were evacuated, and we evacuated as a family, because my brother was of military age, and my sister was thirteen, and we evacuated to west Yorkshire, and as it happened my father, as a war disabled person, was hospitalized in the same town. Anyway, within a week we were found jobs, and I became a clerk at this William Asquith’s which was a large firm, it employed a thousand men in the workshop, and two hundred in the foundry, there were about fourteen hundred employed there. I worked out piecework cards for all the men, each job was timed and you worked out each job was timed, and the pay. I worked in that office for over two and a half years, and then one girl in the accounts office wanted to do nursing, and they told me I had to go and work there, and I’d get five shillings extra a week, and I became a wages clerk, and on Wednesdays I did the wages envelopes for the two hundred foundry men, at four o’clock they had to be ready, I was driven in a chauffeur-driven car sown to the foundry with the boss from the next office, we paid one hundred men each, they all had five numbers and I always remember one with a Scottish accent, his number was O one two twenty two, and every three weeks it was my turn to have an early canteen lunch, the others could go home, and I was left to look after the wages of a thousand men in an office near the road, doors unlocked, and I was glad there were three girls at the other end of the office who stayed for lunch, otherwise I would have felt very vulnerable, and I kept quiet about my job, even when I came back, because I knew that was carrying on. Anyway, the wages came to four thousand, two hundred, and fifty pounds, which today would be like a quarter of a million, wouldn’t it, and my wage was three pounds, one shilling, and sixpence towards the end, less eight shillings income tax. I asked once, I had seen a pair of shoes in Mansfield’s shoe shop, which I wanted very much to buy, we had to give coupons for them, so I asked if I could have permission to go on a Saturday morning, I would queue at half past eight outside the shop, and there were only three people in front of me, and I got my shoes, got the first bus up to Asquith’s, and after they’d sold eight pairs at that particular shop they shut for the rest of the day. I always remember that pair of shoes, beige sued shoes, casual winter shoes, and they lasted for the rest of the winter. And then we couldn’t get silk stockings any more, so it was fashionable to put calamine lotion on our legs, so that they would look beige, and we started that, we thought we’ll go quickly to the office and go quickly behind the desks, so that no-one would notice, and it became fashionable, A large bottle of this calamine lotion, beige lotion, and you’d paint your legs, and you’d wear little short fur boots to keep your legs warm, and that’s how it was, different things like that. I once bought a rejected parachute, white silk, and I made a slip — no coupons — I thought I could make a slip out of it, I don’t know if I ever wore it, but I tried that.
I………. When did you return to Guernsey?
We returned to Guernsey in August 1945, our house was occupied, it was a communications centre during the War years…
I………. Where was that?
In [Eturs?] Road, in the centre of the Island, and they had machine guns, we were told in the front garden, and barbed wire round, and round the back, and a canteen where apple trees were, so even if we’d stayed we’d probably have been ordered out of our house. After that, the British military moved in, so eventually in August we were eventually allowed to come back,
I………. You moved to England, and you went and did this job you were telling me about, quite a responsible job, to be in charge of so much money, and in some ways you might not have been able to do a similar job or a similar line of work if you had stayed in Guernsey.
No, I was the only non-Yorkshire person in the office, and there was I looking after a thousand men’s wages every three weeks. I still communicate with the two colleagues that I work with on wages, and they send me Christmas Cards, and one writes every two or three months, you know, she’s the same age as me,
And when I think now, someone could have walked through those doors, and threatened me, and I use d to think now what will I do, because it was all pound notes and silver in those days, so I throw the pound notes all over the place, or do I throw them in that steel cabinet and shut it tight, you know. I used to think, you know, responsibility. And of course there were doodlebugs, only for a very short time. They came, sometimes, in the afternoon, and we used to watch them. They flew low, less than two thousand feet, like the small Jersey planes, and you’d see the flames shoot out, but that only lasted less than three weeks.

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