大象传媒

It was quite early in 1945 that we were moved to Ashford in Kent,or rather to a farmer's field about 2 miles out of Ashford.Here our accomodation was more primitive but the A.T.S still had their wooden huts,each standing seperately in line,the ablutions being in a hut at the end,still with a boiler for hot water when the gunner on duty as boiler-man remembered to light and stoke it,but only in the evening.The men,however, were in tents and had to take their showers in what for all the world looked like pre W.W.1. bathing machines drawn on to the site by lorries.This seemed unfair to me so we,the G.L. team,suggested through our No.1 - a Corporal,who saw our Sergeant who saw the Officers and, in quite a short time,it was arranged that the showers were out of bounds to A.T.S. on 2 or 3 evenings a week.We never lacked hot water after that.

There were sheep in lamb in our field, one motherless lamb was penned with a ewe who had lost her lamb but the farmer had to move them as we spent too much time anxiously watching to see if the ewe would feed the lamb - I don't remember the outcome.

Again we girls were treated to tea by the lady of a house on the edge of our field.I remember there had been a tennis court marked out on her not very large garden.We re-marked it for her but goodness knows if anyone ever played on it!

What little leave we had was spent in Ashford,though one 24 hour pass was spent in Folkestone, where I ran into an ex-office colleague who was in the R.A.F. Regiment.We all went dancing somewhere on the sea front. The coast of France could be seen quite clearly. My friends and I spent that night in a Salvation Army Hostel while the R.A.F. went back to camp.There were quite a lot of Americans in the area (some of them black) so we had our first sight of jitter - bugging; I wasn't much of a dancer - even English style - but that was quite beyond me.

Six of us were walking back to camp one night about 11p.m. and still a lot of daylight as the country was on double summer-time, when we came upon a bad road accident - a large Army truck had run into a group of soldiers from a camp further along the road from ours. We did what we could for the injured, saw them into an army ambulance that had been called, but the driver said he hadn't permission to go to a hospital.
Fortunately a staff car (saloon,painted dark green)
drew up beside me. An Officer,wearing red tabs on his shoulders,got out, asked me what had happened and I told him.
He went over to the waiting ambulance which was very soon on its way - fast.As a result of this I was asked (by one of my own A.T.S.Officers) if I would like to go to Officers Training Unit.The thought of any more training made me feel weak.

One night in June,the 4th - 5th,we were called out, given a bearing to search and our screens were filled with aerial activity. A rather keyed up male officer knocked on the Receiver door, looked at the Range screen and announced "This is it".
The invasion of Europe had started. Just a week later we were thrown into a frenzy of activity by small aeroplane shaped objects with fire coming out of the rear; an eerie sight as it was misty and they were too small to contain a pilot. They flew too low for our guns to be effective so we were shut down after a month of hectic, noisy activity to give fighter aircraft a chance to shoot them down over the sea. These were the VIs, or Doodle-bugs, and flew faster even than Spitfires but I've just recently learned the guns further inland managed a very high score of direct hits.

By Mrs K.J. Stott
1 Ainthorpe Gardens
Low Fell
Gateshead On Tyne
NE9 5ES

Further account Of Life On The Gun Sites in Brotherton Library - Leeds ( Curator was Mr Peter Liddle )

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