大象传媒

I was called up in Bournemouth in 1943. The women's forces were closed so I was given the choice of jobs. Either a nurses' aid in a Southampton hospital (which was being badly bombed at the time), working in a munitions factory in Bournemouth (so boring) or into a new NAAFI canteen that had been opened in the Bay View Hotel in Grove Road, Bournemouth. I chose the latter job.

A lot of the hotels in that part of Bournemouth were taken over by the Pay Corps. We had to work very hard, not only keeping the place clean, but constantly supplying the Pay Corps with urns of tea, made with evaporated milk. The men called for the full urns twice a day to take them back to their departments, or "wings" as they called them.

Despite the hard work there were some compensations. We went to the Pavilion Tea Dance two or three times a week, though where we got our energy from I don't know. The entrance fee was 1/6d. which enabled us to have a buttered tea cake, a cup of tea AND lots of partners - American and Canadian!

My first day was most embarrassing. I was issued with this long white overall which only fitted where it touched, as the NAAFI blue overalls had not yet arrived. After all, I had always been smartly dressed in black for my previous sales job in Beales department store. This certainly wasn't nice! I was nearly nineteen and this sort of dress was very important, especially with all the young soldiers milling around. Despite all this I was very fortunate as I didn't lose anyone during the war and had a relatively good time.

I had a very frightening experience though, when one of the land mines dropped at 3.25am on 16th November 1940 in St.Leonards Road. This was very near to our home in Stewart Road. Three other mines were dropped that day; two in Westbourne and one on my old school in Alma Road. They caused a lot of grief and unhappiness.

When Beales got bombed on 23rd May 1943, fortunately a Sunday when the store was closed, I was still working for them before my call up. The following morning we didn't
know where to report for work so we went to the bombed site in Old Christchurch Road. We were sent to Bealesons, an associate firm, on Poole Hill. We were given various options and I decided to take my fortnights holiday. When I returned it was to the old Woodhouse furniture shop, next to the Holy Trinity Church in Old Christchurch Road, where Beales had set up a new store. One of the jobs was to cover the office walls with brown paper and set up our jewellery counter with replacement stock from our sister Eastbourne store which had closed down due to the shelling of that part of the South Coast. We had to reprice everything as Purchase Tax had been introduced.

Back to my war service and after a couple of years in the NAAFI in Grove Road I transferred to the Toft House canteen. Here we served mostly civilians from the Records Office in Dunholme Manor. I worked daily from 8.30 to 5pm, cycling to and from home.

When Toft House and Dunholme Manor were handed back to their previous owners, we all moved out to some prefabricated buildings at Kingston Lacy near Wimborne. We travelled there by coach every day.

The buildings were very basic with concrete floors, coke ranges and stoves. They had been built, we later learned, as an American Hospital for the injured being brought back from the D-Day landings but never used. An Italian POW camp was also nearby.

I was at Kingston Lacy for about two years and then onto my next job of learning to be a GPO telephonist. This was very hard on the brain as I hadn't had to use my memory for four years. By this time the war was over, thank God, and I was earning a much better wage.

(PK)

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