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A.T.S. for four years. How old was I; twenty when I joined up and I was, first of all went to Preston to a holding unit. Then from Preston to Colchester the first bombs when I get there. It's quite a lively town. And from Colchester to Chester; I was demobbed from Chester. So that covers four years, a lot of stories but far too many for me to even sort out. In those days I was Corporal Ashford. Well,1939; I was in Birmingham for two years when the bombing was at its worst. And the house where I lived we had a landmine outside the house; in the road an enormous crater which was there for, huh…, for many, many months.
It was pretty rough, yes. But fortunately, apart from damage to the house, I don't think anybody was killed. But the bombing was very bad then. In fact, when I joined up I probably had less to worry about in the way of raids, etc.
I was in the ATS I was mainly doing office duties; company office duties sort of thing. Yes, but plenty of marching you know, drilling. I did, I enjoyed it very much the marching and drilling. There was deep snow when I arrived at Training Centre and it was bitterly cold but that bit of training was in Yorkshire; bitterly cold. Really toughened us up; we certainly did, we were issued of course, which involved lots of very warm underwear which was more than useful, very tough boots.
Oh, there was plenty of dances. That's one good thing about the Army there was loads of entertainment. There was always something going on if it wasn't the 'E.N.S.A.' concerts. There were dances, various regimental dances. Of course, we had the Canadians and the Americans as well, near our unit and they were very good at entertaining; big dances, parties. That was in 44; 43/44, perhaps 44/45.
Oh, I went to them all! Certainly did. I didn't miss out on those. And we made some very good friends. You met people from all walks of life.
First of all, we slept in a Nissen hut; there were 12 in the Nissen hut and all we had was the little area where our beds were, and a cupboard at the side of the bed. And, a box at the foot of the bed; that's all the possessions we had. And every morning we had to polish the linoleum underneath our beds. I was hopeless at it. Some of them were brilliant, absolutely. So you see we were a real mixture.
Oh, we had to; we had a room inspection every morning and the Brigadier would march in, march through the room to see how beautifully clean it was and put his hand up at the top of the door to find there was a bit of dust.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Wyre Forest Volunteer Bureau from a recording made by Irene Ashford and has been added to the site with her permission

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