大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Katherine Hobart, a volunteer from 大象传媒 Radio Northampton on behalf of Mrs Doris Webb and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Doris Webb fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I was fifteen when the war broke out. I was evacuated twenty five miles outside London to Redhill in Surrey. I stayed there for three years with a Mrs Askew, who was the sister of J.Arthur Rank, who was famous in films at the time. Mrs Askew had a mansion and she took ten children randomley from my school, and I was one of them. One teacher came with us and we slept on mattresses on the Billiard rooms floor. Mrs Askew had a butler, a cook and two chambermaids. She lived there with her husband, two sons and a daughter, who were in their twenties.

It was fun because I was a child and there were ten of us. We lived in the servants quarters and would help Mr Thomas the Butler. We had the run of the estate and could use the swimming pool, croquet court and tennis courts. At home in London I had lived in a small flat. We went to Rygate Girls County School. We had to share it with the Redhill girls so we only went on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, but I still got my school certificate only going to school three days a week. The school was in the flight path for bombers, so when they couldn't drop them in London they dropped them in Redhill.

We had school dances with the boys school that had also been evacuated but we had to move because Mrs Askew was fed up of evacuees living in her house. Then the Americans and Canadians comondeered her house. We were moved to the Spanish Ambassadors house, there were twenty of us. We had more fun there. We had proper beds and were looked after by the Holiday Fellowship.

In 1942 I went back to London and worked at 大象传媒 Broadcasting house as a short hand typist, it was a reserved occupation. When I was nineteen girls were called up for factory work or to be nurses. I didn't fancy either of them so I joined the services. Because I worked in a reserved occupation I had to resign. I joined the WRN's and worked for them for three years. I worked in Portsmouth as a Playmaster Commanders writer. I wrote the letters which drafted men abroad. On one night duty an aircraft carrier had been sunk in the Pacific. We had to stay up all night writing to inform people of the deaths. Because we were in Southsea during the D-Day landings, we saw the people coming back.

I met my sister in law and started writing to her brother in North Africa because he wanted letters. Three of us wrote to him but he only wrote back to me. I met him in 1945 when he was demobbed and we were married in 1947.

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