大象传媒

This story was submitted to the website by Eleanor Fell on behalf of Bunty Ferreira, who has given her permission to add her story to the website and understands the terms and conditions.

During the war my sister was a Scandinavian monitor for the 大象传媒. In 1942 I came for an interview at the 大象传媒 to be typist for the 大象传媒 Monitoring Service at Evesham. It wasn't like normal typing, I was very young and I was thrown in at the deep end. The first person I had to type for was an alarming Russian gentleman called Professor Katkov, who was very tall and wore a very long grey scarf.

He dictated to me at the rate of knots, all on one note, very quickly and with a lot of unknown Russian place names. It was steep learning curve but I managed to survive. There were many learned people who were monitors and masters of plenty of obscure languages, and most of them had very thick foreign accents, so it was hard to understand what they were saying.

I was billeted in Evesham on Market Gardeners with very simple people. The lavatory was down at the end of the garden, and they had an annual bath in the kitchen!

In 1943 I moved to Caversham Park in Reading with 大象传媒 Monitoring and I became a Query Clerk in the News Bureau. This was a very interesting job as I had to take queries from 大象传媒 departments and the Government - even 10 Downing Street - and find out the answers.

There were so many different nationalities working in the Monitoring Service that quite often a misunderstanding would occur. On one occasion someone in the News Bureau, said 'Fetch me a pole' and within a couple of minutes a Polish Monitor arrived. He then sighed exasperatedly and said 'Not that sort of Pole, I want a pole to close the top window!"

I later became an English monitor, and had to listen to worldwide radio in English. If I came across something being broadcast that was of particular importance, then I had to run quickly to the News Bureau and find out if they wanted it for a News Flash. If they did I had to type it out at speed and get it back to them pronto.

I had a wonderful time at the 大象传媒, where I met my husband and made many friends, one whom I was a typist for and still play tennis with today!

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