大象传媒

I was born in Kilburn, in London during January 1925, so I was fourteen when war was declared in September 1939. I remember Neville Chamberlain speaking on the radio 鈥淲e are at war with Germany鈥�.

My father was G T E Rowed, and being in the RAF, he had joined the Airforce during 1917. It meant that we were continuously on the move to different locations around the country. This made it very difficult to get a job, so I was not working at this time. I had been to Commercial College in Oxford to learn shorthand, typing, and bookkeeping. After the course finished I stayed at home for a while.

I was not directed by the Government, like other young people because I was part of a Service family. Likewise we never had any evacuees stay with us. We were constantly on the move. Eventually we ended up in Lincolnshire where father was stationed. My father, was stationed nearby, he was now an Armourer in the Airforce. He introduced me to Guy Gibson of the Dambusters fame, I was by now 18 years old, and shook hands with him, and he had just come back from the successful raid in Germany.

In Lincolnshire I went to work for Arthur Monk and Company Construction Engineers. Monk had built all the runways around Lincolnshire, enabling all the big bombers to land. Now they were installing FIDO. This was a system of lighting either side of the runways; allowing planes to follow runways. These lights, I believe were fuelled by petrol, or at least fuel ignited.

After this contract was completed Arthur Monk and Company asked some of us to go to London to work on something else. So I went to London, and was told to go to Queen Anne鈥檚 Mansions in Victoria Street. The Company had a new contract; this was during 1942 鈥� 1943. We did not know what it was. They told us this work was called 鈥淧hoenix鈥� and it was 鈥淭op Secret鈥�. Here I sometimes had to deliver documents by taxi from the front door of the offices, and take them to various places, they rotated the girls for this task. We were not allowed to walk, or catch a bus, or go down to the Underground. One of the places I had to go to was beneath Westminster Hospital. I had to stop and be checked at the door before I was allowed in, and I was given a special pass which had to be checked and verified. I was never allowed into the other rooms. The documents were taken from me, and taken into another room, and then eventually given back to me. I would return by taxi to our offices with them.

I also remember another place where I used to deliver the documents by taxi. This was to the back entrance to a well known department store. Here a young man, took the documents from me, and again would disappear with them into another room. Then later they were given back, again I never knew what the documents were, and it was always different girls used to do this task.

Then during 1944, after the Allied Invasion, the Directors gave us a dinner.
The V1 rockets came over, this was disruptive, we ducked under the table,
because you never knew where they were going to fall, if you heard them fly over your head, you breathed a sigh of relief, yet you knew it might kill someone else.

We were in a reserved occupation. Every year you had to go before a tribunal, to establish whether or not you were doing war work. I had to give them a letter from my employers explaining this.

Well then, one day they asked us at the office, when the contract was finished 鈥渨ould we like to see what we had been working on?鈥� Of course we all agreed, as curiosity got the better of us. It turned out that we had been working on the Caissons; which were being built at Barking in Essex. These Caissons were the concrete bases which formed part of the famous Mulberry Harbour, which you can still see in Normandy nowadays. The Caissons provided a platform for metal tracks, which were laid on top. This was to enable the Lorries with their much needed food and water and medical supplies to land on the beaches. They had sunk ships in the sea, to attach the floating harbour onto, in Normandy. The whole Mulberry Harbour was a floating harbour which was towed down the river from Barking, then across the channel and this was the all important thing that we had been working on all along. Different parts of the Mulberry Harbour were made in different parts of the country. It enabled the Allied Forces to successfully go onto the Normandy beaches.

Then around 29th April 1945 there were peace rumours going around.

I remember on VE day, I was in London with all the other staff from the office. We were waving from our office windows at the people. The streets outside were packed, you could hardly have moved down there, and I saw Churchill in his car leading the procession coming up the road. I waved to him and he waved back. Peace at last.

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