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Kathleen moves to Brighton

While Kathleen Reece continued to live as an official evacuee in Ledbury, her mother Ada and brother John were living in Brighton where her father Charlie had been posted with HMS Vernon. She explains:

鈥淭he Royal Navy took over Roedean Girls鈥� School on Brighton sea front as a depot, and there was another one in Hove. Roedean was then known as HMS Vernon (R). Mum and John followed Dad, and moved into a bungalow on Saltdean Mount. There were several Naval families living in similar homes in that area.鈥�

鈥淚 was still at school in Ledbury, so stayed with Mrs Preece. I enjoyed school so much that after I had taken, and passed, my School Certificate the first time I returned for another year and re-took the exams at the end. Some of my friends also returned for another year because they had not passed all their exams the previous year. In those days, you had to pass a certain number of subjects to gain the School Certificate."

Kathleen remembers that, because Brighton was a restricted military area, residents needed a pass to get in and out. When she took the train to Brighton from Ledbury, she had to be met at Brighton station. There were lots of allied servicemen based in Brighton, she remembers meeting a Norwegian Naval officer at a party and going out with her sister Peggy and meeting up with Canadian servicemen.

Brighton came under enemy attack several times during the war. Kathleen remembers:

鈥淭he St. Dunstan鈥檚 home for blind ex-servicemen was used by the Navy for training. Some German planes came over and machine-gunned along the sea front, and the bullets went through the blackboard in the classroom. A shepherd on the hill nearby was also killed in this attack.鈥�

Kathleen continues:

鈥淎fter I left school in 1943 I went to teachers鈥� training college in Brighton as a day student, living at Saltdean with my parents and travelling in on the bus. It was the Municipal Training College on Brighton sea front. Sometimes we had lectures in the Brighton Royal Pavilion, and I can remember being quite bored in a lecture and trying to stay awake by counting the dragons in the music room.

鈥淒uring the summer, we students enjoyed sunbathing in our spare time. We had access to a flat rooftop at the college, and several girls would sunbathe topless. The Spitfires and Hurricanes would swoop down very low over this particular part of Brighton!鈥�

A special mission at Sompting Camp

While at college Kathleen was a corporal in the Red Cross, and worked voluntarily in the Royal Sussex hospital on Saturday afternoons. In June 1944 her experience enabled her to be chosen for service for a special emergency for the Ministry of Health.

鈥淲e were aware that something significant was about to happen, because not only were there big lorries full of troops going along the Brighton road, but you could see what was going on out at sea 鈥� landing craft were sailing up and down the coast. This was the lead-up to D-Day. We didn鈥檛 know at the time what we had volunteered for, but we knew we would have 24 hours' notice and were on stand-by. Just after D-Day, my college Principal came to my house and told me to be ready to go to Sompting. The next day, I went back to college and our Principal took my friends and me to Sompting camp in her car.

A huge transit camp had been set up at Sompting on the South Downs to receive and care for refugees who were coming across to England from the Continent. The camp was a village under canvas, complete with a chapel, a canteen, a hospital, and even a cinema. Kathleen remembers watching the film Wuthering Heights at the cinema; it was quite a breezy day and the walls of the tent, onto which they projected the film, were moving about. Other services were based at the camp, including the Fire Brigade, and the Girl Guides did a lot of the catering.

Kathleen says: 鈥淲e were all sworn to secrecy at the camp. My job was to meet the refugees, give them an initial health check for conditions such as pregnancy, or for nits or diseases, and to give them an identification label accordingly.

鈥淭he Red Cross unit that I was with consisted of 20 volunteers from the first year of our college, and we were supervised by a matron. I slept in a bell tent with about seven other Red Cross members. It rained so hard that we were flooded out of our tent, and had to spend the rest of the time in a huge marquee with the other members of the unit and the matron. One of the group insisted on making 鈥榓pple pie鈥� beds for the others.

鈥淚f there was an air raid, we had to put on our tin hats and get into deep slit trenches that had duck boards at the bottom. I even fainted on one occasion because we had been standing so long. One night, while we were in the trench in our pyjamas and Wellingtons, we overheard two doctors discussing the new pilotless planes that they had read about in the papers. This was the first time we had ever heard of the 鈥榙oodlebug鈥� or 鈥榖uzz bomb鈥�. We were soon to have first-hand experience these ourselves, and it was absolutely terrifying hearing this whining engine going overhead. When the noise stopped, you knew it was going to fall out of the sky and then there would be an explosion. One actually fell on Saltdean Mount.

鈥淎lthough I only lived at the camp for about a fortnight, it felt as though I was there for months. During that time only one refugee arrived from France, and they were taken straight on to London.

鈥淓ven after I returned from Sompting Camp the Red Cross informed me that I was obliged to remain on 12 hour call, and could be recalled at short notice. However I was allowed to take up other forms of National Service should I have the opportunity, but had to keep the Red Cross informed of my address.鈥�

VE Day in Brighton

On VE day in 1945 Kathleen had the day off college, and the King had delivered a radio broadcast in which he said that all Naval officers were to splice the mainbrace with a double tot of rum. They didn鈥檛 need much encouragement, and Kathleen can remember going around the golf course with her Dad and some of his colleagues, and they were all 鈥榯hree sheets in the wind鈥� (the Naval term for 鈥榙runk鈥�!).

Kathleen joined in the VE day military parade, marching along the seafront from Kemptown to Hove with the Sussex 500 Red Cross unit in her uniform, along with soldiers, sailors, RAF, the Home Guard and military bands.

Later in 1945 Kathleen qualified as a teacher and took a teaching post in a Secondary Modern School in Berkshire.

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