大象传媒

51a - Ivy Ballard was 18 when the War Started, and was already working at the Air Ministry in London:

" When the war started and I was walking around London, I went into a recruiting office for the Wrens, I thought jolly good job this I am going to go into the forces. Well that was fine, they said yes they鈥檇 like to have me, until I said that I was working in the Air Ministry. Oh no they said, we can鈥檛 have you, you come under the 鈥渆ssential works order鈥� and you鈥檝e got to jolly well stay where you are, and I was most upset because I was looking forward to the uniform but I didn鈥檛 get it.
So I was stuck in the Air Ministry at that point for the rest 鈥�, well for most of the rest of the war. When I got married they let me out, but until then I worked in the Air Ministry.

I was just doing ordinary 鈥� I started in a contract office, a department that let contracts all over the world for RAF aerodromes, and the odd thing was that in that particular office was the first time I came across Dar Es Salam, which I had never heard of (I said where is this place) and they told me where it was, because eventually I pitched up in Dar Es Salam some years later.
I went and got married to somebody who took a job out in East Africa, and he took a job in what was then Tanganyika and the place we first went to was Dar Es Salam, and it was very hot.
But I did remember, I said oh, I built an aerodrome here!

There was an enormous number of aerodromes built - thousands - hundreds anyway, yes, oh yes there were. And I used to have 鈥�, I did a certain amount of proof reading on the contracts, but as I say I was very young, and very na茂ve and very stupid at that time. And then they moved me onto another office, and I moved around the Air Ministry a bit.
But before the war I became addicted to the theatre, I decided that the theatre was a good place to be in, and so somebody introduced me to Unity Theatre in London, Unity Theatre which was behind Kings Cross, between Kings Cross and Camden Town and of course was a theatre that was supported by the Labour Party, probably a bit more socialist than labour and at the time when I was there, it was probably a bit more communist than socialist. But we were all very patriotic of course, and what happened was their objective was to put on plays or entertainments that had social content, that was the important thing about it, so we all had social content. And at that age anyway, my age anyway I was still what 17/18, you were very idealistic, you either were very left wing, or very right wing in those days and I was very left wing 鈥榗os my boy friend had been very left wing and he had been most upset because I had announced that I wasn鈥檛 interested in politics, and this was a dreadful thing to be not interested in politics, and since his politics were socialism, I obviously became a socialist.

Anyway we used to work 鈥�, we worked all day and then it was a purely amateur affair and then went and worked at Unity Theatre weekends and at night. And there I met 鈥�, while I was there, I said 鈥�, the people who were there with me were Bill Owen, Alfie Bass, Ted Willis, David Kossoff and a few others; people who now are very well 鈥�, they are all dead now, I am still around but they were a bit older than me. And they were there then, which is very nice and we, all of us worked terribly hard. They were there, I was there because I was idealistic and this was the right thing to be was to be a little communist, they I feel were there more to display their talents, because when Unity put on a new production the various critics, the various theatre critics in London always came to the opening night and the various newspapers and various producers and that, and these chaps wanted 鈥�, well it was a way of being seen and they were seen, and of course as we know what happened to some of them they were very well seen.

The Ministry were probably very upset about my socialism; well I mean they would have been, they probably were backstage, but they knew, I mean you were young and they didn鈥檛 take much notice in those days, but no Unity was great fun. It never got a direct hit while I was there anyway, but what we did get was incendiaries on the roof, and of course they make holes, and so dotted around the theatre were buckets catching rain for a lot of the time, and it was 鈥�, well in those days it was fun, and we thought we were doing a good job. We were all very patriotic, I mean we wanted to win the war.

We were at that stage on the same side as Russia, so was Mrs. Churchill at the time. And I鈥檝e got a lovely story about that, too. She ran, during the war she ran this thing to collect soap and toothpaste for the defenders of Stalingrad. Stalingrad was being defended at the time, that was horrid. I mean, well I was too young to realize how horrid it was, but at least I could collect soap and toothpaste which I did. I collected a lot of soap and toothpaste, took it along to whichever office it was where I thought they wanted it, and they said oh yes, that鈥檚 very nice, glad you鈥檝e collected all that but you鈥檝e got to make it up into little parcels. So I took it away again, at the time I was living in a girls鈥� hostel, made it all up into little parcels, I never knew what happened to those little parcels there. I left them in the hostel, they might still be there for all I know. But at least Mrs. Churchill and I were on the same side, and we were both defending Stalingrad.
But anyway as I say, Unity was fun. There was something else I was going to say about Unity now I have forgotten it, but no I can鈥檛 think what it was. Anyway that was one of the things that happened, it was getting sidetracked by Mrs. Churchill and her toothpaste and soap that put me off.
But other than that鈥�

I lived in South East London, some distance from work. That was interesting because one office in the Air Ministry I worked in was in, I think it鈥檚 King Charles Street, it runs parallel to Downing Street off Whitehall and I worked there for a time, and we had bunks in the basement, and when we worked very late as people did at that time till eleven at night, groups of us would walk up Whitehall to the Lyons Corner House at Charing Cross for supper, well that was fine, except I was terrified.
We all had tin hats but walking up Whitehall the guns, they were very loud indeed, and bits were falling down out of the sky, I didn鈥檛 mind 鈥� I was quite happy to be hit by a bomb because I didn鈥檛 think I would know much about that, but what I was frightened of was being hit by a lump of metal flung from up there onto me. Fortunately it didn鈥檛 happen, and we didn鈥檛 sleep there every night and then some nights I went home back to South London and what was amazing was that the public transport went on working all during the war, it was 鈥� I mean I got buses home the whole time I was there during the night, it was amazing. And of course getting the bus home for me, it was a bus that I picked up at the bottom of Whitehall, went across Westminster Bridge down to the Elephant and Castle, and then down the New Kent Road and then the Old Kent Road to New Cross, which of course was a quite badly bombed area, so on those bus routes you passed houses which had been bombed out. And I never saw a body, this sounds terrible, I didn鈥檛 want to see a body but I never did, only the remains of houses, gas cookers hanging around on the first floor and things like that, but of course the bodies had all been cleared away by the time I got there.

The buses weren't diverted,no. Well I can鈥檛 remember, one is 鈥�, it鈥檚 awful really, one doesn鈥檛 remember an awful lot about it. I wish I had taken a lot more notice at the time. For instance there was one occasion, there was a college called Morley College, just the other side of Westminster Bridge, and I used to go there sometimes for evening classes. And opposite Morley College there was a tube station, I have forgotten what name, which one it was, but it was, and as you know people slept in tube stations during the war. And one night I went to 鈥�, I went with a girlfriend to Morley College, we went there, and we found that we were stepping over bodies, live bodies, who had all bedded down on the floor of the gym, and in order to get where we had to get coffee, we sort of wandered round them and stepped over them so we avoided them. And what had had happened, was that the previous night or a couple of nights earlier, the tube station opposite had had a direct hit, and these were survivors from that hit who鈥檇 come across to Morley College and been allowed for the time being to bed down on the floor, fine. A couple of days later, I was going 鈥�, my bus used to go past Morley College, I was going to work in the morning and I realized that Morley had had a direct hit, so these poor types had come across the road where they鈥檇 had one direct hit, over to Morley and managed to get another one, but I didn鈥檛 go back to Morley after that, I think they probably closed it temporarily anyway; they kept going as long as they possibly could. But that was rather nasty.

There was another one that was rather nasty really. I lived in a short road at the top of a place called Pepys Hill, from New Cross it went up to Pepys Hill, and there was a little short road at the back there and on the corner was a house, I used to pass it when I came home from work because sometimes oddly enough I used to come home on a tram. Trams went on running a lot during the war as well, and I had to pass this house anyway, and on summer evenings they would be playing music, they would have been playing it on records of course, on a radiogram as we had in those days, but they obviously liked light classical music, I didn鈥檛 know anything about music in those days or very little, but they had this 鈥� And on a summer evening I would stand outside their house outside under a tree, listening to what they were playing, that was lovely, and then go on home. And then one morning I came up from our air raid shelter, and our Anderson, and that house had had a direct hit, and if they鈥檇 been in it, well as they probably would have been, they鈥檇 have been killed. I didn鈥檛 know them, I knew nothing about them at all, but I thought how sad it was that something as pleasant as that, and they鈥檇 pleased me for quite a bit listening to their music, I just hoped that they鈥檇 been listening to their music when they got the direct hit at least that would have been something."

(concluded in Part Two)

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