大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Age Concern Dorchester on behalf of Ruth Yelling, and has been added to the site with her permission.

Mrs Yelling fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
When the war broke out, I was an apprentice to a Tayloress and was in the third year of my five year apprenticeship.

One day, I was walking down the street in my home town of Bury St. Edmunds when I saw a girl in uniform and I recognised her as someone I had been to school with. She said that she was working in the Fire Service and that they were desperate for telephonists. She told me where I should apply to and after a few days thinking about it, I went along and applied to join the Fire Service who accepted me.

Bury St Edmunds was surrounded by aerodromes, there were four (two were American) in the local area and so the fire service was very busy.
On one occasion, the service was called out to be on standby for a Flying Fortress that was coming in to land but it still had a bomb on board and so when it landed it blew up, killing all the crew members and injuring our Company Commander, who lost a leg in the explosion. It was a very sad day, when the men came back to Headquarters after the incident; I shall never forget the smell of burning they brought with them.

Even if we were off duty, we were still on call, and as soon as the sirens went, we had to report for duty. One day, I went to a dance at the Catholic Hall with my cousins who were mad about dancing and we had a lovely time but then they wanted to go on to the pub but I didn鈥檛 and so I was left on my own at the dance. I was asked to dance by the stand-in drummer but as it got later, I realised that I would be late home so I said that I had to leave and he offered to walk me home, and I just managed to get back on time for 9pm!! However as soon as I reached my front door, the sirens went and I had to rush in and change into my uniform and go on duty.

One morning I left for work as usual and as I cycled down the street, I could hear a plane droning in the background, but this was nothing unusual as there were always planes flying over. Suddenly the noise was much louder and was accompanied by rattling sound and I realised that it was an enemy aircraft and it was strafing the streets. I peddled very fast to get to work. When I returned home from work, I could see the bullet marks on buildings and the street.

Bury St. Edmunds was very lucky in that it was not bombed directly, the nearest bomb was on the sugar beet factory on the outskirts: my mother was near there and was pregnant at the time. She went into labour and my brother was born prematurely.

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