大象传媒

This story was submitted tothe People's War site by a volunteer from csv/bbc london on behalf of Joyce Carey and has been added to the site with his/her permission. Joyce fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was called up in 1942 and although I wanted to go in the navy I was put in the army. I suppose if I had asked to go in the army I would have been put in the navy. I had to report to Guildford army barracks which I did not enjoy very much but I was only there for 6 weeks. Whenever we had a weekend pass I got on a 409 bus to Croydon and home. I got posted to a village in Oxfordshire called Nettlebed, it had 3 public houses and 1 church - we had 3 buses a week which went into Henley-on-Thames - Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday but I could not afford the fare as I only received 15/- a week which in today's money is 75p. I worked in the operations room where we had to plot German aircraft when there was a raid and pass the plots over to our searchlight batteries and gun positions who hopefully shot the planes down. We had shifts 8am - 4pm., 4pm - 12pm and 12pm - 8am.
After two years I was transferred to Greenford in Middlesex where I worked in a huge gun shop. We had to strip down the 25 pounder guns and clean all the working parts in parafin as they had just come back from a desert campaign. After this we put them back together and painted them with khaki paint to camouflage them ready for the Normandy landing, and we had to waterproof them.

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