大象传媒

I was 19 when I joined up with the First London Royal Army Pay Corps. We were taking the place of men who had gone away to War and thought we were doing our bit, our contribution to the war effort. All us women had pen friends. One of mine was Harry Gibbons. We wrote for 4 years and he said he would visit when he returned to England but he arrived in Cornwall and I never heard from him again - I suppose he met a Cornish girl. My other pen friend was Tom Penny, he won the Military Medal for bravery, this was not given to officers but to ordinary people. He was taken prisoner of War at Alamain, first being sent to Italy where he said he was very badly treated and then on to Germany. At the end of the war he was repatriated. Prisoners of war were given small cards on which they were only allowed to write 5 words. I had a huge collection of these and letters to my pen friends which I gave last year to the Imperial War Museum in London.

I enjoyed my time in the Pay Corps, we drilled around Kings Road, London every morning and were billeted in 15, 19 and 23 Lennox Gardens, behind Harrods. I found out afterwards that Ava Gardner bought one of these houses. She might have slept in the same room as me!

I came originally from Lindfield which was a very quiet little place where nothing ever happened. The Forces coming to Lindfield was the best thing happening for us. All the different regiments were stationed there for 3 monthly periods. We used to have a boyfriend for 3 months, then move on to the next one when he left. We had dances at the King Edward Hall. You were not allowed to attend Dances at the Hall unless you had the corect clothes and shoes and did 'proper' dancing. My father lent one boyfriend a pair of patent shoes, unfortunately both the boy and the shoes disappeared, my father was not happy. We had a lot of fun during that time.

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