大象传媒

Report of a private A T S service girl.
Going to a Sunday school service on one Sunday afternoon I saw two barrage balloons go up in smoke at Falmouth.
Later, on hearing the alarm sound, I stood behind a door and got my mother to hide under the kitchen table because we expected bombs.
Later still by standing on the Barn steps, I saw Plymouth burning 50 miles away.
Because bombs were dropped at Perranwell, one outside my Grandmother's garden and a 500 pound bomb dropped but was detonated 50 years later which fell halfway where my late husband was manning the bonfire site which was to be lit to direct planes coming into Culdrose airport.
After this I volunteered and served four years on the 9 mm sites being 464 and 480 mixed ack ack gun sites.
After training I was sent to the Thames marshes where we replaced the soldiers. Later I had compassionate leave because my mother was distressed because my brother who was serving in Malta and me on the gun site.
I borrowed a bike and cycled to Torquay from where I saw the ships on the skyline for the D Day invasion.
Later I saw the D Day soldiers go to the invasion from Plymouth.
One day an American soldier told me the only time he had seen 4 radar ships together was in Panama when the Japs took Pearl Harbour.
The girls were housed in Nissan huts, 24 to a hut.
Looking out the doorway one morning, I said this is not a normal fog. It turned out to be a man made fog, to hide the ships and many soldiers and other service personnel.
In 1941 the main road to Plymouth were lined with large banks of something, tarpaulined covered. This was ammunition.
About eight men and one girl lost their lives in the war from Perranwell village.
I still write to girls and a naval man friendship I made in the war, but we are dying out now.
After the war I was pleased to have a two room cottage for my mother and myself and helped to form the women's section of the British Legion through which I met my husband because we had a choir. And were having married for 35 years
I was born in December 1914 this is the best I can now do, being 89 years old, I had a good life and hold two medals and now a civil defence medal also.
Theodora Marion Carder, ( was Marion Richards )

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