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Dad's snow white hair

One would have thought that my father would have welcomed the announcement that there was to be conscription for women as part of the war effort. Not so; he was appalled, even though he would be heard moaning about the plight of a lone male living in a house full of women — the house having only one bathroom and three of the women being teenage girls.

At this time the invasion of Britain was thought to be imminent. Churchill had announced that all that would be offered us was blood, toil, tears and sweat, and that we would defend our freedom no matter what the odds. Refugees from the Nazi-occupied countries told horrific tales of what was happening — Jews and Gypsies being sent to concentration camps and Aryan type girls ending up in brothels. My sisters and I were blond and blue-eyed, my youngest sister Ann having long thick fair plaits that she could sit on. My father thought that at all costs he had to keep us at home, where he could protect us if the worst came to the worst. He told me after the war that he kept a loaded revolver in his desk and fully intended to shoot us rather than have us taken away by Nazis. He was only in his forties but by the end of the war his hair was snow white.

'Number please'

At this time he was a Chief Inspector with Wolverhampton Police Force. He heard that the Chief Constable had enrolled his daughter Ida as a GPO telephonist; a reserved occupation due to communications being of primary importance. Before I could say 'number please', I found that I too was sitting at a switchboard amongst dozens of other girls. We sat there for hours like a lot of battery hens. When the enemy bombers crossed the coast they were tracked and when they were reaching a specific area a 'Red Alert' was notified. The telephone exchange notified all the relevant authorities and the air raid sirens sounded, telling the population to take cover in the air raid shelters.

I was not really happy but accepted my fate as the pay was surprisingly good and I needed to save money. I had promised my father that I would not enlist in the women's branches of the armed forces. However, I fully intended to join the British Red Cross as a nursing member. To do this I had to be able to pay for the uniform necessary to become a mobile VAD. The uniform was expensive, the navy blue costume had to be tailor made and 14 white aprons, seven blue linen dresses and white starched caps as well as other items had to be purchased.

Meanwhile, my father was happy - I lived at home and the telephone exchange was only around the corner from the police station where he worked.

Fire duty

Because of the shortage of manpower the telephonists were asked to enrol for fire watching duties. Two friends and I volunteered to go on the rota. So it came about that May, Jean and I were firewatchers at the automatic telephone exchange on Stubbs Road, Penn Fields on the night the German bombers came to Wolverhampton. The exchange was T-shaped. The part facing the road had a sloping roof and the back had a flat roof over the apparatus room. A room had been fixed up for firewatchers on the first floor. Three trestle beds with blankets were provided. The toilet facilities were a shock - we had never seen a urinal and were very grateful to find a more female-friendly facility tucked away in a corner.

In the early hours there was a 'Red Alert' and the air raid sirens sounded. The artillery guns in Langley Road started to fire and the searchlights lit the whole sky. Whistles were blowing, dogs were barking and people were running to take shelter.

We scrambled out of the window onto the flat roof over the apparatus room and found, to our horror, two incendiary bombs burning fiercely. We had a bucket of water (which could not be used on incendiary bombs) and a small bucket of sand. It was obvious that they would burn through the roof onto the delicate communication equipment below before the fire brigade could arrive, causing disruption to any telephone communication in the Penn area. Consequently we decided to try to throw them off the roof using the long-handled shovels provided.

Fear, adrenaline and our combined strength helped us to throw them off the edge of the roof, down onto the vegetable garden where the telephone engineers had been 'Digging for Victory'. We emptied the buckets of sand and water onto the scorched areas that remained. From the roof we could see that another incendiary had landed near to the tennis club's pavilion next to us. We ran down the stairs and met a police constable sent by my father to see if I was all right. Helped by him we managed to deal with the tennis club bomb. He said it was thought that the bombers were trying to target the Bolton and Paul's aircraft factory at Pendeford, where they were making the Defiant Night Fighter.

In due course the regional director sent each of us a letter of thanks.

Baked potatoes

In the morning we examined the vegetable patch and discovered that one of the bombs had landed among the potatoes and had cooked them. Those around the perimeter were edible so we ate them for breakfast: a delicious addition to our meagre wartime diet - thanks to the Luftwaffe.

Soon afterwards I joined the Red Cross and was posted to the RAF hospital at Longdon Hall and from there to the Royal Naval Hospital at Portsmouth. My father raised no objection, having come to the conclusion that I would manage to get into danger in spite of all his efforts to keep me safe!

Years later he had the unenviable task of coming to inform me that my fighter pilot husband had been killed in Belgium, just three weeks before our son was born. In my husband he had found the son he had always wanted, only to lose him just before peace was declared.

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