大象传媒

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This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Phil Sealey of the Somerset County Museum Team on behalf of Nora Heather and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

鈥淎t the beginning of the war I was living in Rochdale. In September 1939 there was a request on the radio, or in the newspapers, for anyone with three languages to do postal censorship work. I applied, was accepted, and I then started work for Postal Censorship in Liverpool.
I was at school at Queenswood where I studied French and I think I鈥檇 just started German. I took the final examination, with exemption from matriculation, which in those days was not called school certificate; and I passed well. I was fifteen then and I was awarded the Irene North bursary, which entitled me to go to Switzerland to study at a small school not far from Bern, where I studied three languages, French, German and Italian. I was entitled to go there at reduced fees in return for teaching some English, giving private lessons; I was there for a year.
At the end of the year I returned to England and then began studying Italian at the High School of Commerce in Manchester. I carried on with that for sometime but I can鈥檛 remember exactly how long for. I really had the three languages to A level standard, which is what they required for censoring work. When I was twenty-one an Italian friend invited me to go to Italy, I think it was for nearly a month, which gave me an opportunity to improve my Italian.
I worked during the day at the Littlewood鈥檚 building in Edge Lane, which the censorship people had taken over. I stayed in Liverpool during the week, at the Young Women鈥檚 Christian Association, and just went home at weekends. We examined the letters and if there was anything that wasn鈥檛 as it should be, we had to submit it to a higher authority. Normally, after examining the letters we put on our identification labels that had own personal number on them, and closed them up. The letters varied a great deal, some was incoming mail, which went no further than this country, or sometimes our ships intercepted mail from other countries and we would have to examine those. There were different kinds of things; in the beginning it was mostly terminal mail to this country.
I then went to Manchester. They decided they needed to examine Irish mail and they didn鈥檛 need language readers, because it was mostly written in English. Those that were already trained were in charge of a table with about 18 to 20 operatives on it. Sometimes there was a bit of military mail but the Army normally did its own censorship so there wasn鈥檛 much. When in Manchester I stayed at the YWCA and I remember thinking to myself they were neither young nor Christian; I wasn鈥檛 happy there. They were people who passed through, came and went, and of course I was only there for a meal in the evening. I suppose I stayed in Manchester for quite a long time, until 1944, I do remember fire watching there. We had a routine, when our turn came up we just had to sleep on quite pleasant camp beds in the basement, nothing dreadful happened when I was on duty. I then transferred to London.
When I transferred to HQ in London, I can remember when I was on the train going down, seeing these aircraft going overhead, hundreds of them, such a lot. I think they going on a major raid over on the Rhine. I just had a very small one room flat for the last year I was in London. We did hear buzz bombs going overhead from time to time, everyone used to say as long as you heard it go off, it鈥檚 not on you. Apart from that I don鈥檛 remember anything else happening during my time in London.
Then they asked us if we wanted to go and carry on our work in Germany and quite a few of us did. The Postal and Telegraph Censorship was part of the Control Commission. We were number 3 District Censorship Station, Hamburg; we were paid by Control Commission from October 1945 for nearly a year and-a-half. Conditions in Hamburg were pretty awful at that time. Although we were part of the Control Commission the Army looked after us. It was soon after the end of the war so all our work took place in the barracks just outside Hamburg. We lived in houses that had been taken over by the Army, the best billet was in a very large house, but after a while they took over more houses and we were transferred to a smaller place.
Then a very severe winter came and that is when we suffered. Our people in Hamburg HQ itself didn鈥檛 know a thing about it, they had heating, all that they required; with us once the temperature had dropped in January and the coal didn鈥檛 come through, the radiators had to be emptied.
Fortunately the Army gave us some very nice rabbit skin jackets and we lived in them. It was a pretty grim time, partly because of the electricity supply. If I tell you that the electricity wasn鈥檛 sufficient to boil a kettle you will have some idea. You see, we were really living under the same conditions as the Germans themselves after they took over those civilian houses; we had a pretty grim time. The Army gave us big blankets to put up at the windows because it was such a very severe winter. We had to have solid fuel pellets sent from England in order to make a hot drink for ourselves at night. Fortunately the Army supplied us with plenty of alcohol; I don鈥檛 know what we should have done without that.
The meals were taken at the Army Mess and they kept us going, but once we鈥檇 retired to our billet we had to cope. It wasn鈥檛 easy, people don鈥檛 realise that in those days in the beginning we didn鈥檛 even have a radio and certainly no television. We asked the Army if we could have a radio and they gave us one.
The German economy had collapsed and had to be restarted; the shops had nothing in them. If we wanted to deal with the Germans the common currency was cigarettes, they would do anything for cigarettes. We used BAFs [British Armed Forces currency banknotes], which were supplied by the NAAFI, [Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes] and could be used in their canteens and stores.
The Germans didn鈥檛 have enough for themselves so they weren鈥檛 ready to sell food to you; you couldn鈥檛 buy anything from the Germans. There was the non-fraternisation policy at that time. We didn鈥檛 fraternise, but we did have dealings with them. We had a very nice housemaid. She wrote to me for years after the end of the war. The staff was very carefully picked. We had nothing to do with the purchase of food the Army dealt with that; it was the Army鈥檚 concern, but you did need fuel but you couldn鈥檛 buy it.
We used our German, German being the working language. At the very beginning all the work was done by Belgians who had been in the underground movement, but they didn鈥檛 stay very long, they left at Christmas, after that the Danes came and took over.
The German population were going through much the same sort of thing as in our billet except they didn鈥檛 have access to food. They did in their way; those who had owned the house that we were billeted in were allowed to keep rabbits. We grew some lettuce in their garden and the rabbits would come in during the day, when we were out, and eat them. The Germans had their ways and means of getting things although there was never anything in the shop windows
The work was basically the same sort of thing as in England. A lot of the mail was from Jewish people in Germany who were writing to their relatives in South America; a lot of them went out to South America. But these wretched letters were written on that very thin rice paper in German schrift [script]. Another part of the work was mail to Germany, which started up again when the postal service was resumed. There were all sorts of different things that the Army picked up here or there that we had to examine. I think it went on until about April 1947.
We went through dreadful times when there wasn鈥檛 any heating, the housemaid had to carry water down the street everyday from the Mess and put it in the bath, we shouldn鈥檛 have had any water in the house without her. So it had to suffice for bathroom needs, there was a different ring of ice around the bath everyday.
Snow didn鈥檛 trouble us it was just the constant low temperature. We were very fortunate that the Army looked after us. They would take us to the Atlantic Hotel in Hamburg by truck from time to time. That was marvellous, we had wonderful evenings and there was always dinner and dancing, then at ten o鈥檆lock the truck would take us back again. I was very grateful that I was given leave. I know I had two peculiar leaves to England, one when we came back in a gale, in a hailstorm at sea.
Once the Army sent us up to Copenhagen for a short leave and that was wonderful. I remember the cheese. It was our last evening and we ordered cheese, not thinking too much about it, and when it came it was a round of Danish blue, on an oval dish, beautifully garnished, we hadn鈥檛 seen so much cheese for a long time. I think the people who served us were amused by the effect it had on us; it was so nice.
I went to the Harz Mountains twice, once in the summer, once in the winter; the Army knew we were having a rough time in the billet so they sent us for winter sports in the Harz. We were taken first to the Atlantic Hotel so we had a civilised night鈥檚 rest before leaving about five or six the next morning, in a heated train! Well, we nearly collapsed; we hadn鈥檛 had any heating for so long, we were just amazed that the train was heated. I think that took us to Hanover, and there we missed the next train. The train we should have connected with had left and it only ran once a week.
So some of the men in our party commandeered a truck, or a van, of some sort, that took us up to the place in the mountains. When it was time to leave someone said we could have an extra day; it was Sunday, but we鈥檇 have to take a taxi or car back to Hanover. We managed to arrange for a driver in a Volkswagen to take us; it was an icy run all the way, the car never touched the road, it was amazing. We had a good driver and at the end when it came to paying, we gave him cigarettes, a block of soap and coffee beans; he thought that was wonderful.鈥�

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