大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Nirmala Bhojani of Leicester City Libraries on behalf of Dorothy Wood ford and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

At the beginning of the war I joined the Air Raid Precaution. I was stationed at Ashby Street Police Station. When the sirens went, we scrambled into our trousers and jumpers and tin hats, cycled down East Park Road to report for duty.
There were tram lines in those days, I recall one moon-lit night there was a German aircraft overhead, distinguished by the sound.
I was convinced the light from my shaded lamp shining on the tram lines made me a possible target, I was very glad when I reached my post.
During my training at Police HQ I learned how to drag an unconscious person downstairs and the best way to escape from an upper floor if the building was on fire.
At the end of 1941, I decided to join the Royal Air Force.I wanted to become an M.T.[motor transport] driver but there were no vacancies so I became a wireless operator, which led to 6 months training at Shrewsbury in Morse for 4 months followed by a 2 months wireless mechanics course in Wiltshire.
In due courseI was posted to Liverpool as a fully qualified wireless operator in the underground bunker of HQ Western Approaches.
I soon realised the reality was different to training, the static and jamming from enemy signals interfered with reception,
but soon my ears were so finely tuned, I could hear a pin drop in a thunderstorm.
The battle of the Atlantic was at its height. The German U-boats played havoc on our shipping,causng enormous losses in men and ships, so much so that at one time we had only 29 days of supplies left n this country and Churchill himself said that the only thing that brought terror to his heart was the U-boats.
Our area covered the whole of the Atlantic inclunding Newfoundland, Iceland, the Med and the Azores.
We worked between 60 and 70 hours a week,waiting for messages about the U-boat attacks. These were passed for decoding and then to the Operations room, where appropriate action was taken. Meanwhile great strides were being made in radar and air technology and slowly we began to gain the upper hand so that in May 1943, Admiral Doenitz, the German U-boat commander conceded defeat and the battle for the Atlantic was finally won.
Soon afterwards those of us at HQ in the wireless cabin were visited by King George the Sixth, Queen Elizabeth and Mrs. Roosevelt and King George of the Helenes.
Afterwards I was posted to the East Coast and then to Pembroke Dock in South Wales, where I was eventually demobbed being pregnant in 1945.

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