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IVY BARTLETT

ATS, ‘Operation Overlord’, Bletchley Park, her husband taken prisoner

This is an edited extract from an interview by Jo Kelly on 30th March 2004. The original recording and the full transcript are held in the Wessex Film and Sound Archive, ref. BAHS 104, © Basingstoke Talking History.

Service in the ATS
I grew up in London and went through most of the Blitz there. I decided, because my younger brother and sister had been evacuated, that I would have to do something, so I joined the ATS.

In August 1941 I made my way to York for initial training and was at Fulford Barracks in York when I decided that I wanted to go into the Signals. I went up to Scotland, to Edinburgh to start my signal training, which took some time. I chose to be a teleprinter operator because the rate of pay was higher. I think altogether I received under a pound a week, but I enjoyed it.

I then went to a place called Tinto in Symington, where I carried on with the Signals. I decided to learn Morse and take a trade test: sending and receiving messages in Morse. After this I was posted to the Ack Ack Command in Edinburgh where I stayed until ’43, I think, working day or night shifts.

There were rumours that we were going to be moved. We had been told to get our kit bags packed but nobody knew much about it. Then one night, and I think it was either the end of ’43 or the beginning of ’44, it was gone midnight and we were told to prepare ourselves because there were lorries outside that were going to take us to Waverley station. Off we went to Waverley station, where a train was waiting. Everybody piled into the train, not knowing where they were going. The train just carried on moving, passing through cities without stopping until we came to a little station in Hampshire, Botley, which is near Southampton. We didn’t know where we were. It was amazing, really, no changing.

We went into huts in a wood, and from there we started our preparation for what turned out to be D-Day.

We worked day and night shifts. I went in on one night shift in June ’44 and all the printers had stopped and there was a deathly silence. It was really quite eerie and frightening because it was usually so busy. At two o’clock in the morning one machine started up and I rushed over to see what was on it. It said ‘Operation Overlord’ and we realised that the day we had been waiting for had started. That was on the 6th of June. It was really quite an event because we knew something definite had happened and something that we had been preparing for. We were busy for a good bit after that.

We moved from there to different places for safety’s sake and I think I finished up in a tube station. I know we were somewhere near Harrods but I can’t remember the exact Tube station. It was in that area. There were printers down in the Tube and we carried on working. Really that was the major part of my service life. I went to a few places after that until I was demobbed in 1946 and then I went to work.

Bletchley Park
A couple of years ago I thought I’d like to see Bletchley Park and phoned to ask for details. The man I spoke to said, ‘You sound particularly interested in it, were you ever involved?’ So I told him what I’d done and he said, ‘Could you come along and see me at the mansion at Bletchley Park?’ which I did. He asked me different questions, my army number and details of what I’d done. He said that although I didn’t work at Bletchley Park, my work would have gone through there because a lot of it was in code or cipher. I received a certificate. They’ve given me the Freedom of Bletchley Park and I have used it since and felt quite proud of it.

Husband taken prisoner
What was to be my future husband worked at a jewellers in the City of London. He was called up and I took his place for a while, so we met when he came on leave and before I joined up. When I joined up he was on the point of going overseas. He thought he was leaving from Glasgow and as I was then in Edinburgh he asked me to go to the nearest YMCA and he would meet me there. Unfortunately he left from Liverpool so we didn’t meet. We didn’t meet again and he went to Singapore.

He was taken prisoner and we didn’t hear from him again. We didn’t know whether he had died. We couldn’t get any information from the Japanese. There was a report from the War Office to say he was missing but they obviously didn’t know if he’d been killed or what. He did survive but because of the treatment he’d received he went blind and quite, quite deaf. He was very bitter at the treatment he had and he never quite got over that.

He came back when the war finished. He was rescued by the Russians because he’d been sent to Manchuria. They did find it funny because the Russians brought food in with them. When the Russians came into the camp they realised just how starving they were and seeing a person coming along on a mule or something, they ordered him off, shot the animal, then cut the meat up for them. It sounds horrible, I know. The Americans dropped food into the camp where they were — Jinsen Camp, I can always remember that. They were brought back to their camp by the Russians, who asked if they could have some food, which was a bit funny. They were starving as well.

They were eventually taken by the Americans and went across some country, heading for San Francisco, I think. Of course, they were very well treated by the Americans and by the Russians but things were different with the Americans because they had more.

They went across America, heading for a port. I know they went through Kalamazoo by train, he said the girls came on the train singing ‘Kalamazoo’. They came back to Southampton on the Queen Mary with double rations.

I was still in the ATS and got leave to meet him. The Red Cross met him. The Red Cross hadn’t been allowed into the camps, otherwise they would have been better treated.

Eventually he was registered blind and went to St Dunstan’s. They taught him to do picture framing and at the Hampshire Care of the Blind they taught him how to make stools. He was so pleased when he could do normal things and do them exceptionally well. Apart from the bitterness he was an exceptionally nice man. He originally came from Deptford in London. My parents moved to Basingstoke with the overspill [‘London overspill’ in the 1960s] and we came down to see them. By that time we had moved from London to Dagenham and we preferred Hampshire, so we decided to look round for a house. We moved to this house in 1964.

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