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I lived in Crook, County Durham but, as there was little work there, I moved to Yorkshire when I was 15 and was ‘in service’ as a ‘between maid’, which meant, in effect, everyone’s maid in a big house in Mirfield. The alternative was factory work at home which I did not fancy.

I moved to Calverley, I worked for a time as a companion to a lady whose husband was a wool reporter and sent them to countries abroad. One day, he asked if I would mind helping him with some paperwork. He noticed that I was good at it and I finished up working for his wife during the day and for him, writing reports and a history of the people of Calverley during the evening; this gave me a chance to improve my administrative skills. Unfortunately he died from diphtheria; just before he died he was still dictating information to me for an important report which had to go to Australia. I stayed with his wife for a time for company and then I went to work for the building society.

Later, when the war began, I was working in a building society in Bradford. I decided to enlist in the ATS as my contribution to the war effort. I was in my twenties and single I so did not mind being moved about. I expected to be called up in any case. Probably because of my clerical background, I was enrolled in the Royal Army Pay Corp- D Wing. I did my basic training in Edinburgh. We worked in different parts of the country depending on where soldiers were stationed.

As you can see from the photograph, the uniform had a regulation length skirt. Regardless of the height of the wearer, the skirt was the same distance from the ground. A Non-Commissioned Officer was in charge of my group, and eventually I became an NCO. We did our training in Bradford. It was a bit scary in a strange town in the blackout. We were billeted in private houses, six or ten girls together. Individuals rented out their houses. Ours was a big town house, sometimes when the sirens went off we spent all night down in the basement as we did not have a shelter. We worked slightly longer than office hours.

We did not have a social life; we did not like to go

into the town, in the dark, at night.

I got on very well with the girls in my group who were from all over the country. We didn’t, in fact, see each other much while working, We were issued with a ‘housewife’, which was a tiny canvas bag containing items for maintenance of clothing, such as yarn and a needle with to mend stockings . We did our own laundry, but could not clean the uniforms which were of serge but it was not a dirty job anyway.

At one time we worked in a chapel in York where the officer in charge sat in the pulpit with a board across it to make a desk while we sat in the pews; the officer looked like a headmaster, watching to see that we were not talking or misbehaving. The boards were taken away for Sunday worship. The officers were all very nice; real gentlemen who treated girls properly. Pay slips came in to us and we worked out the soldiers’ pay from the information on them and passed them along the line entering the information into books. We moved around, depending on where the soldiers were stationed. The female soldiers got 1/8d (one shilling and eight pence a day); the male solders got a little bit more. We had a Soldiers Service and Pay Book, the AB64, which, among other things showed a record of inoculations and discharge notes.

While I was in the ATS, I got married to a man whom I had known at school since I was five years old. He worked in an ordnance factory. We both had to get special leave for the occasion I had to ask my commanding officer. We were not married in my home town of Crook, but in a village called Calverley where I was living at the time. We had bought a dress for me and one of the bridesmaids; two other older bridesmaids wore their best 'dance dress' and the fourth, a little girl, had a new dress made from some green material with rose buds we had managed to get. This little girl had just recovered from scarlet fever, so the dress and being bridesmaid was an incentive for her to recover quickly. Fortunately the dresses blended together beautifullyas they wre all pastle shades.

Because of rationing, neighbours came along offering a few currants or other cake making items until there was enough for a cake. Most people pulled together and helped each other in the war. The cake was proudly displayed on a table with a fancy white cloth, and placed on the front step for all to admire. I had been a Sunday school teacher and in the choir at the local chapel, so this is where we were married. We had the reception in the Sunday school hall.

My husband was not called into the armed forces as he worked as an engineer in the munitions factory at Spennymoor.

My parents and sister were not called up but my brother in law was in the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders: he didn’t come back. He was on the Burma railway. Nearly every family was affected. My husband’s brother was a prisoner of war.

I left the ATS when my daughter was born in 1944- I did keep in touch with some of the girls for a time, some for quite some time, one girl was my younger daughter’s godmother, but we lost touch as time went on. I still keep in touch with one girl from school who was in the NAAFI; she lives in Scotland; when she had a weekend off during the war she would come and visit me at Calverley

I did not return to Crook and eventually settled with my husband in Darlington. When we had our baby we were not issued with the large gas mask into which the whole baby was put, and I do not remember receiving extra rations for food or clothing.

I remember an aeroplane passing over Darlington one night which crashed near a farm. The pilot, a Canadian, was killed and recently a monument has been erected to his memory, as, we learned later, he died struggling to steer the ‘plane away from the town in order to save lives. His relations came over recently when the town remembered his effort.

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