大象传媒

鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Diana Bransby from the Haywards Heath Library and has been added to the website on behalf of Mrs A with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions鈥�

When I was 17 I went for an interview at the War Office in Whitehall. A friend had suggested I apply, I had only recently learnt the secretarial skills required and didn鈥檛 expect to get the job. There was an air raid during my interview so it was hurriedly cut short and they took me on in spite of my limited expertise. When I received the telephone call offering me the job, I actually turned it down! I hadn鈥檛 realised that we were all going to be called up and that in fact I had no choice in the matter.

The offices were situated in a subterranean basement, very dark and dank, and long interconnecting passages with poor electric lighting, and ropey air-conditioning. We were four typists with our supervisor Miss Meeks. There were also three clerks who organised the dispatch of the government red boxes. It was a 24 hour a day 7 day a week office. The work was shared between us civilian employees and some military personnel, and it was they who worked there overnight. We worked from 9.00am to 6.00pm with 1 day off every week and if you wanted any extra time so that you could have say a weekend, or 2 days together, you had to work for two weeks straight through. My day off was Wednesday and I worked weekends.

Our job was to type up the telegrams 鈥榠n clear鈥�. The telegrams arrived in code, they then went to the adjoining office for de-coding by senior personnel and we typed the result, this meant that we were often privy to top secret information even before Mr. Churchill himself. This was then 鈥榬oneo-ed鈥� which was the only quick method of reproducing such work before the days of photocopiers, laser-printers and such modern marvels! One of the girls I worked with used to sing while she worked the roneo machine, I think it was a welcome change from the typewriter. I can remember her - can see her now-, turning the handle and singing 鈥楢napola鈥�.

There were several military veterans whose job it was to take the finished telegrams in the red boxes to their respective destinations. When I think about that now, it seems very risky to entrust such delicate information to those veterans, many of whom were probably quite infirm. And it had to be distributed speedily! An awful lot of waste paper was generated as a result of our work, and this would be dealt with by the military at night, who took it away in hessian sacks, (to be burnt presumably).

Getting to and from work was often difficult, because of the bombing. When I began at the War Office I lived with my grandmother in Kensington, London, and took the number 9 bus. Later when we were bomber out I moved south of the river, I caught the number 88 bus and in May 1941 after a particularly heavy bombardment everyone had trouble getting into work, every bridge across the Thames that the bus driver tried to cross was blocked by debris and fallen masonry. He tried Vauxhall bridge and then Lambeth and then the next one along and so on. In the end I simply got off the bus and walked and I finally arrived near lunchtime. Everyone thought I must have been killed!

Experiences such as that made me appreciate the safety of the subterranean offices. Yes, it was gloomy, and the hours were long, but you knew that what you were doing was important and worthwhile. However, there was another drawback to working down there. One day, going along one of those corridors to the lavatory, I stopped short, horrified, to see a huge rat! It didn鈥檛 move. It looked just as petrified, and no wonder, as its feet were glued fast to a board put there for the purpose!

Hollywood Shoes and Knicker Elastic.

On Wednesday evenings I used to work as cashier in a restaurant run by the WVS in a beautiful building, Gloucester House, on the corner of Park Lane and Piccadilly. Situated on the 1st floor, St George鈥檚 restaurant was for those people in the West End who needed a good meal at reasonable prices, such as police and ambulance workers, civilians could also go there 鈥� you could get a really decent meal for 1/3d or 1/6d. I enjoyed working there, it was a cheerful place and such a contrast to my day-time job in the gloomy basements of the W.O. Unfortunately for me I lost that job as the building was commandeered by for use as a hostel for servicemen on leave.

After grandmother died in 1943, I moved to Westminster and I became involved with fund raising for Flag Days, to raise money for the Red Cross and also Westminster Hospital, since before the NHS a voluntary hospital would have an annual Flag Day to raise funds. If you could afford it, you joined the H.S.A. (Hospital Saving Association) which cost about 4d per week i.e. just under 2p and that was like a medical insurance, which certainly helped if you were ill because otherwise you鈥檇 go to the public hospital. I was quite happy selling flags outside the hospital, or poppies on Armistice Day outside Westminster Abbey, glad to do my bit, but near the end of 1941 when Mrs Churchill appealed for help to raise money for 鈥渙ur new friends鈥�, the Russians, who had just come into the war on our side, I didn鈥檛 see that they merited my help, because of their previous alliance with Germany.

It was tricky managing rationing: 2oz of butter, 1 egg per week. Fat was hoarded, and I would trade butter for marmalade or jam because I had a sweet tooth. It was a dreary time, food was tasteless you couldn鈥檛 get pickles or anything to cheer it up, so if you had access to onions, for instance, they were precious you鈥檇 queue for ages just to get a bottle of dreary sauce. Bread didn鈥檛 keep at all long, no more than a day or so.
Shopping was always a race against time, either because I had only my lunch hour in which to do it, or because when goods came in they disappeared so fast. We would queue all through our lunch hour if we heard stockings were available. One Sunday I went to Petticoat Lane in the East End, I needed to buy some elastic for sewing -knicker elastic! 鈥淢ake do and mend鈥� was the catchphrase, which was all very well if you could get anything to mend with. I鈥檇 never been before, and it was a revelation, what a treasure trove of things you could find there! Articles you couldn鈥檛 find anywhere else, or thought you鈥檇 never see again, how did they do it?!

I was lucky enough to hear of a big consignment of shoes that were delivered to a shop the other side of Shepherds Bush and I managed to get there on my day off. I was fortunate indeed, as these shoes all came from Hollywood film studios (the pairs tied together with string) and American woman in those days had small feet, as I do, so I bought some beautiful shoes for 10/- that had scarcely been worn.

Another of my purchases was not so successful. I was registered with the Army & Navy Stores for my ration book, and the butcher offered me two pork chops so on my day off I took them to two elderly friends of my grandmother in Chiswick, they would gladly swop their clothing coupons for some of my food rations. With the chops carefully wrapped in greaseproof paper I arrived at their house only to find they had gone out (not many people had telephones then), so had the bright idea of writing a note accompanying my package and putting both through the letter-box. As I did so, then turned to go, I heard four little feet pattering across the linoleum. Oh! I was so cross!

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