大象传媒

When you are eighteen, you are young, silly and just the right age to serve in the British Army, for fortunately, the imgination is not very vivid or active at that age.
1939 Found me and my friends approaching eighteen and in the 14th Bucks Company A.T.S. We had joined in 1938. Not for patriotic reasons, but purely because the company we worked for, had promised us an extra week鈥檚 pay and leave to attend the annual Army summer camp.
I don鈥檛 think the company was quite so happy when I was one of the lucky ones scooped up before the actual outbreak of war. Our job was to help call up the male Territorials who had enrolled in the Oxon and Bucks Light Infantry.
From then on, we were moved around fairly locally, until the beginning of 1940, found us attached to the R.A.M.C. at Boyce Barracks, Crockham, Hampshire.
During those times, we were not supposed to go beyond our nearest town which was Aldershot. My friend Geraldine (Gerry) and myself, had other ideas as to where we wanted to go. Particularly on Sundays. We already had our own bicycles with us and had smuggled civilian clothes into our rooms.
It really was a wonderful, long hot summer in 1940 and what a joy it was to cycle away from those dusty, boring old barracks. We were adept at disappearing into the little wood close by, stuffing our uniforms into our bicycles鈥� capacious holdalls, and emerging clad in flimsy, cotton comfortable dresses; No trace of the army left. We both lived in Windsor. Quite a distance from Aldershot but we thought nothing of cycling home to sample our mother鈥檚 respective Sunday lunches when we were free to do so.
This particular Sunday, we were rather late in leaving our homes and starting back. In fact, it was dark when we left and I think the air raid warning had gone. This meant we couldn鈥檛 take our usual route through Windsor Great Park for the guns there could be in action. We had to take a much longer route, which would add considerable time to our journey.
I was just dozing off, when I found myself literally hurled out on to the cold floor. It was our Hut Sergeant, an elderly ex W.A.A.C. I thought she had gone crazy.
鈥� The Germans have landed! The Germans have landed!" she yelled. 鈥� Get down to the dug-out straight away.鈥�
Her description as to what was going to happen to us when the Germans actually arrived, left us in no doubt that she had a far more active imagination than we had. So that was why the bells were ringing. The penny dropped at last. We were being invaded.
We went down soberly to the air raid shelter. We had not been missed and still could not believe our good luck. Everyone thought that we had gone to bed early and slept through all the noise. Nobody ever did find out any differently. In the end, we spent a most uncomfortable and miserable night, sitting upright in the cold, dark dugout with the regular men鈥檚 wives and children.
We watched, as the Regimental Sergeant Major and some of his senior N.C.O鈥檚 slept peacefully, as they stretched out on comfortable mattresses that were laid along the middle of the shelter. How they snored.
It was a man鈥檚 world in those days. The night the bells rang over Southern England really brought that home to us with vengeance.
鈥淚t wouldn鈥檛 happen like that today. Would it?鈥�

Ena Brason.
Long Crendon. 18335 vol鈥� Prentice.

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