大象传媒

I was 15 in 1939. My school, Nottingham Girls High School was in the centre of a large manufacturing city, so it was evacuated. One third of the school, including me, went to a large unoccupied country house, seven miles outside Nottingham, called Ramsdale Park. The other two thirds went to a Masonic lodge on the outskirts of the city. The staff worked in both places, so pupils doing national exams, such as I was, were moved between the two sites. As I was the only girl doing classics, the staff took me in
their car.

Those of us studying French would walk up and down the school drive with the tutor, practicing our French. When the day of the French oral came, the French examiner was detained by the caretaker at the lodge gates as a spy. He did look very impressive in striped trousers, black jacket and a small moustache. After some delay, the headmistress rushed down the drive to vouch for the foreign (albeit an ally) arrival. The poor man gave us all very good marks. Perhaps he was still in shock!

As there were only eight of us in the fifth form at Ramsdale Park, we were in a privileged position with almost total freedom. We had cocoa and sandwiches left out for us in the evenings and the lights out at 10pm but the rule was rarely enforced. Homework was done between 6-8pm and this was my lifesaver. At home, I had always had to do it in bed, as I was quite incapable of starting it at a reasonable time.

Cricket was introduced. I had already been keen on watching this at Trent Bridge, where I had seen Hardstaff make his record 364 runs, so I loved playing it for real.
Whenever the siren went at nighttime, we had to get up and sit in the corridors with mugs of cocoa and boiled sweets. Strangely enough, the only bombs that fell in the area were dropped in the grounds of Ramsdale Park. Fortunately, it was only a stick of five 50 pounders and they just made a line of small craters in the grounds a long way from the house.

I had always wanted to work in a library, so after I left school in 1942, I started working at Nottingham Central Library. By the time I left in 1945, I was running the Music and Drama section. The library was in the Technical College building, which was a vast echoing Victorian gothic edifice. We had to firewatch regularly and it was quite spooky going around with a very dim torch, looking for smoldering rafters, or worse. We never found anything. Although Nottingham had one of the largest armament depots in the country it was never bombed. It was due to be bombed the weekend after Coventry was devastated, but, by then, the RAF had worked out that the Germans had flown in a circle round Coventry causing such carnage and they were able to intercept the planes before they reached Nottingham.

I felt the war was passing me by, so although I loved working in the library, in 1945 I joined the FANYs. This stands for First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. In the First World War, a group of girls capable of driving ambulances had been recruited to rescue wounded men from the battlefield. By World War II, the FANYs had been expanded into a unit to receive and send coded messages to people training to be dropped into France. A strong sense of rhythm (which I didn't have!), is needed to send Morse code accurately, but fortunately the war ended before my services were required.

Hitchhiking was practiced everywhere, particularly in Britain. If drivers didn't want to stop, they didn't, but some liked to chat on their journeys. It never entered my head that I might be molested and I never was. I once hitched a ride in a fish lorry to see a friend in Edinburgh. Although I sat in the cab with the driver, I still reeked of fish by the time I arrived.

I then joined the Control Commission, whose offices were in London in Park Lane. Germany was divided into four zones and I was sent to the British Zone and worked for two years. I was in the Intelligence Library, but at the weekends we went in lorries to the Rot Haar Gebirge, where we went walking in the summer and skiing in the winter. It was more difficult to hitch in Germany as service vehicles were not supposed to give lifts. However, I did once travel with a brigadier who was going my way.

It was here that I began to take an interest in wild flowers, they being far more profuse in the German hills than in over cultivated England. I have continued this interest all my life.

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Anastasia Travers a volunteer with WM CSV Actiondesk on behalf of Helen Coyte and has been added to the site with his permission. Helen Coyte fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

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