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VERA SEARLE (nee Gardiner)
ATS

Vera was born in Sunderland, but came to Barnard Castle when she was 18 months old. She had two sisters and one brother and her father had the cobblers on The Bank. After school she worked for Billy Peat for about six years.

I started getting interesting in joining up when the troops started coming to Barnard Castle. My application originally got deferred but I was determined to ‘go see life’, so off I went to train at Warrington and I remember not being able to get comfy on the top bunk as I had had a ‘jab’ in each arm! I was then sent to Botley, 8 miles from Southampton, and was trained on switchboards. We lived in two-storey barracks, with ‘spider’ dormitories where there was a central area with arms off it for sleeping. After I was sent to Burlesdon Towers, a big manor house four miles from Southampton, where we were taught plotting, and lived in a tower. I wore headphones and received details of where planes were, marked them down on small boards with china graph pencils and then passed the message on. At Tangmere, outside Chichester, the ATS worked alongside the WAAF in two rooms with a central table on which they did the plotting with magnetic sticks. We lived in Nissan huts here. I was also at Lyndhurst and lived at Dibdon Manor. Here we could see from the plotting that the planes were coming over the Isle of Wight and Beachy Head, straight for London, and could hear them on their headphones. All along the south coast there were land-mines and barbed wire. Southampton really suffered ~ we could see a ring of fire around it during the bombing and I never saw a complete church the whole time I was there. The streets were ‘wiped out’ around the centre.

We went dancing regularly and was never stuck for partners. The soldiers would make up a band. We would have a trestle table with a barrel of XXX, which I enjoyed. We would walk to anywhere that we heard there was to be a dance ~ often the four miles into Southampton. The last bus was 7.30 pm so we had to walk. The food was OK, but at some places you would get one plate with Spam, butter and jam on it. When on night duty you would get your meal brought to you and I remember eating cold fish when coming off duty at 6 am. We worked from 4 am to 8 am and 4pm to 8 pm, with a day off in between and then the shifts were reversed.

When the battery was broken up I was sent for two months driving training to Catterick and could then choose to go to either London or York. My friend wanted to go to London and I said I wouldn’t be able to get home on a 24 hour pass, so she invited me to her home. I had been trained to drive 1500 wt. Bedford wagons and I delivered mail to embassies and Buckingham Palace ~ I drove in the main gate and was sent round to the post room. In London I lived at a flat at 43 Sloane Gardens and I remember it having a pink bathroom suite but no curtains. The Office where we left the trucks was in Eaton Square and I worked from Northumberland Avenune, off Trafalgar Square. I delivered items to all the rooms that were under Whitehall and would go down to them in a rickety cage.

I thought about staying in as I had enjoyed it, despite being scared at times, and I had ‘seen life’, but was de-mobbed in 1946.

Coming back to Barnard Castle Vera met her husband at Deerbolt. She worked at Glaxo, then married in 1949 and brought up her family. Since then she has worked in many of the shops in town. She made some good friends during her time in the forces and about 20 years later one traced her in Barnard Castle and her son is now married to Vera’s daughter, Catherine.

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