´óÏó´«Ã½

My husband trained as a television engineer when he came out of the army and he built the television in about 1940. I came from Eversley near Basingstoke and the whole village came in to see the television when we got it, nobody had seen one before

My husband was in the TA and he got called up and I was still nursing with the Red Cross. We had a private house that got turned into a convalescent home for all the New Zealanders. There weren’t too many air raids, but only about 4 bombs were dropped, but there were only dropped if they were over loaded or had to turn back.

I helped to make the big satellite tracking dishes down in Cornwall in Goon Hilly. They used to communicate to the Tower of London on Short Wave and now they can communicate all over the world and into space. I was with GEC, but I volunteered for the RAF in 1939 and was accepted, I was really looking forward to my one plane but the firm wouldn’t let me go they were allowed to exempt the workers, as the work was so important. I still remember the number I was given for the RAF, it was 1318222. I can’t always remember my own name but I can remember that!!
Things about Dorset, we have the famous biscuit, the Dorset Knobs, and Laurence of Arabia and also Thomas Hardy. We do have a wonderful history if you look a little bit, Far from the Madding Crowd was written about Dorset.
I played the piano accordion and I paid 1 and 9pence for my first one it was a 12 base that I bought in Fareham, and then I learned to read music and we had a little 4 piece band and we used to play social events. We would play all the wartime songs like Roll out the Barrel and Lambeth Walk.
I was living in London, Golders Green, at the beginning of the war but was evacuated to Scotland, to Granton on Spey that is up in the Highlands. My mum was Scottish so when we were evacuated we went back to her home.
I’m from Woolwich and worked in the Woolwich arsenal. I started there in 1934 as a office boy delivering things on my bike, then I worked in the factory and then I got my apprenticeship as a tool maker in the Royal Carriage Department. We took all the PLUTO — pipeline under the ocean that ran from Fawley over to France and all the oil went through this to France. I ended up testing all the engines. Then I transferred down to Christchurch and worked with Sir Donald Bailey where the Bailey Bridge was made, and I was given a workshop and people would come in with sketches and I would make up various things for them. Later on I ended up in an engine test house, which had engines coupled up to dynamometers which would give the horse power of the engine and then I ended up in the inspection department, which meant that the men in the shop under my control would strip the engine down when they came off the line and I would measure every moving part in the engines and weigh up the piston rings and then they were put together, and the man from the firm would make sure it was done properly and then it would run for 1000 hours in the cell and then stripped down again and I would measure every part to measure the wear it had.

I got married during the war in Bexheath in a church called Christchurch, and during the service the Doodle Bugs came over and they stopped and we thought that was it, so we all ducked but we were ok. She made all the dresses, as she had been a court dressmaker until she was called up into the arsenal and that’s where I grabbed her! It was a beautiful wedding for wartime. We had our reception in the community centre, and my aunt and uncle who lived near the centre got their piano and pushed down there and we all played and sang.

The ration books could cause a lot of problems if you wanted to run a party; you had to reply on people to give you points to by extra spam etc.

One weeks ration for a family was 4 rashers of bacon, 2 chops, a bag of sugar lumps, one egg, butter, marg, cheese, tea.

I worked for ICI in Hayes and was on munitions and was on a conveyor belt and I had to see if the bullets had proper holes in them.
I took in evacuees we had to. We had a lot of people in the house anyway and still had to take evacuees.
We had a couple in one of our rooms, he worked in London so was only here at weekends, but when the moved out all the dirt was swept under the bed and after a while I could smell a peculiar smell so I had to get the council in. There were bed bugs everywhere, it was awful.
We had the Morrison indoor shelter and we would always get in it as soon as we heard the sirens going off, we felt safer that way.
We would hear them go off at 9pm and we could tell the time by them. We were in London then and the Doodle Bugs would cover over and you’d hear them stop and you only had a short while before they dropped. I was working for a doctor then so I was exempt from any other work.

Mary is from Tipperary originally and was 90 last month. I lived in London from 1930-60 and then moved to Nettley Abbey and had a shop there for 10 years and then moved down here. I remember the Doodle Bugs. My father was killed in the Battle of Som (?) but my mother was a wonderful woman. When I was 19 in 1942 all the bombers went overhead going up to Coventry to bomb them, it went on all night, the drone of the planes.
I joined the Land Army when I was 18 and I was asked which section I wanted to go in and I said Arable and they right then start milking next week. We used to get up 5.30 and start milking every morning. Originally I’m from Mile End but bombs flattened it all. My father was in the city police so we weren’t allowed to move out further than Woodsford in Essex because he had to get all over the city quickly. I was milking in Essex and Surrey and would live on the farm and work with the cowman in the dairy. I worked at one place and when they had their meals they would always have their sweet first and then the main course, so I asked them if they minded me changing it round but they were most put out. There were POWs working on the land and I had to escort them down to Hove, I wouldn’t have stood a chance if they had turned nasty because they great big Germans. Most of them were very nice, and wouldn’t let me carry anything heavy if they could help it, but in the Land Army you took your chances. All the animal feed came in 200wt, 100 wt and half 100wt sacks and was supposed to carry them on my back and that’s how I think I got my bad back.
My husband was in the Royal Hampshire Regiment and went across to France but got badly injured.
There were WRENS and WAFS and they would make the balloon barrages in Titchfield and the building is now the Inland Revenue
There were a lot of the balloons in Greyshot and our jobs as girls was to hold them up, until we were told to pull them down.
One of my friends operated the search lights
My brother and I joined the Home Guard and the clerk from the office was an ex-major so we all joined together. They made him Captain in the Riffle Brigade and we all had to go to Orpington for training all the Guard in the London area. My car was confiscated and used to drive him everywhere and I was the driver. I would go on Wednesday’s to check the stores and there was a shell of a caravan all fitted out with stoves etc so we could heat the water for the teas. One day on the way back we all called into the pub to get cigarettes for the boys and the Major was in there and we were kicked out and we had to leave all the fags behind because we were on duty and shouldn’t have been in a pub. My wife was in the Royal Arsenal Defence Auxiliary who were attached to us and would come down at weekends to dish out the sandwiches to the boys.
We would have 1000 cigarettes in a big a long box and we would sell 5 at a time, people couldn’t afford 20. It was hard in 1943/4. We sold everything in our shop, I had to get 25 people to give me bacon coupons to go to Harris’s in Eastleigh to get the rations for 25 people, and a friend of mine was a food officer which was useful. The pubs would sometimes the pubs would run out of beer so if people said ‘there’s beer at the Crown’ the Crown would be packed! We had an Anderson shelter that would go into and we had a table shelter, and all the Underground Stations were packed with people trying to stay away from the bombs. I was living quite close to the HMS Collingwood when the got bombed. They waited until it was payday to bomb it, but because the Navy didn’t stagger the paydays it was an attractive target, they should have staggered paydays.
We lived in Blackheath in London and there were Zeppelins going over and they dropped the bombs on the Broadway near us and just missed our house and then during the next war we lived in Tunbrige in Kent and we were told to build shelters so that we could shelter when there was danger and then there was a big iron table brought to the house and we had to go underneath the table if there were sirens going off. A Padre in the camp and he was also an emergency drive in the area so he could be called on any time day or night to drive. He had to be ready for the call any time. It was horrible because the Zeppelins came over and our artillery were driving them away they would come back and drop the bombs near us. I don’t know how our house didn’t get hit; I think it was a miracle. We had to be careful that everything was blacked out in case a light showed through.
I was at school in Portsmouth when the war started and I had a newspaper round and all the houses were gone and I was searching for people. I was 16/17 years old, it was frightening and we were machine gunned every lunchtime and every night and that lasted for several years. They would attack because it was a Naval base. My dad was in the Navy on the Queen Elizabeth battle cruiser when it was bombed, and eventually he died from his injures. We all had air balloons in our road and the girls would make our shirts from air balloons. We had a couple of German aircraft crashed at the airport. We used to smash them up for the metal and at the end of the war we were smashing up spitfires for the metal. I joined the Air Force and went to Singapore for 2 years, there were 2000 of us sot as soon as we landed there, I was 18. I trained up near Blackpool, but there wasn’t much training because I could play football, if you could play a sport that was it you were on the team. I went on the pitch for the first time and there was a machine gun on each corner. The old Victory was in dry dock and my whole family worked on there. Apparently when Lord Nelson was killed he was put in a barrel of rum to preserve his body. The medical deck was painted red so you couldn’t see the blood.

I went to school at the airport and also a grammar school and then went to work at the airport. I worked on flying boats when I was in the Air Force.

Some children were evacuated to Scotland but we didn’t want to go, but a lot of my friends went. The one’s who stayed still had to go to school. Once every 2 weeks we would go to the cinema and see trailers.

I was in Africa for a long time and then eventually the Americans arrived and we went up through Italy and Switzerland and finally got home, it took a really long time. When we got through Italy that’s when trouble set in as the Germans didn’t like it. We had new machine guns that were good but a little bit heavy. I was in the Royal Army Service Corps and I was a map-reader and would show them the way on motorbike and would go on ahead. I was going through the dessert and sometimes you would see a lake and wonder how to get past it, but a bit further down the road it was gone, it was a mirage. Tarmac had been laid for the army to use and the sun would make it so hot and it would make it look like there was a lake in front of you. I got down as far as India and as far up as the North Pole and we were also sent over to Canada to teach people how to use a Spitfire. I was walking to where I needed to be and I saw a gorilla or a bear and wondered if in should shoot him with my machine gun, but I didn’t, I let him go and he let me go!

When I was travelling back from Africa and we arrived in Italy they we made a fuss of us, even though they were against us.

When went from the UK to get to the Middle East, we were picking up some Air Men from America and when we got to Africa we marched all the way up through to North Africa.

My brothers were in the Navy so we had to move from Devon up to London.
On my first day at school, my sister came with me and we had to sit down and make woollen balls. We all had to write on slate boards.
In the war I was in the Royal Ordinance and my husband was based in Hereford so I went with him, and as we didn’t have any children I had to do war work. We used to make cordite for the bombs and had to measure them out into boxes, but we had to be careful because they could explode on a hot day. I worked in a dress shop before that and to had to wear my hair tied back and shoes with no nails in, it was quite tricky. I glad to come back to Bournemouth.
My first job was leading the horses out into the harvest field before I became a shepherd. The first farm I worked on was in Salisbury and then I went up to the boarders of Scotland and looked after a flock of 1700 sheep with my 2 dogs. We would have to get all the sheep into pens ready to sheer; the sheerers would come from overseas.
I used to go to the Palet de Dance in Boscombe to go dancing, I was doing the Jitter Bug with an American chap and he slung me over his head and I landed in the drums on the stage! It was 2 bob to get in so I would go 5 nights a week. On a Wednesday afternoon the Pavilion held a tea dance so we would all go there for tea and scones. I got my first pair of nylons from a Yank, it saved making a mess with liquid stockings, or trying to draw a line up the back on your legs!

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.