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Mary and Joyce — sisters, living near Devizes in Wiltshire during the war:

We were young when the war broke out, and didn’t realise the impact it was to have, we all felt that it would be over by Christmas. We were more concerned with the impending family wedding. After Dunkirk we volunteered; we helped on the farm and fed injured soldiers that were recovering in the Corn Exchange in Devizes. We had to wear such awful khaki uniforms! We called the knickers ‘passion killers’ because they were so dreadful, and the socks were nasty too. At first we lived at home and cycled in, there was such an early start, about 6am, some mornings Mary would fall asleep and have to be guided along on her bicycle! Then we moved into barracks, the beds were dreadfully uncomfortable. Everything had to be done a certain way; it was very particular. We were supposed to learn German, not sure why, but we never concentrated, in fact most of the time we assed about and didn’t take it seriously at all! We trained for the Royal Artillery, and were meant to practice carrying the men on stretchers but we just turfed them off and larked around. During ‘War Weapons’ week we had to stand outside of the Bear Hotel in the market place and collect pots and pans, we stood there for hours, listening to speeches. But it wasn’t all fun. Life was made harder by the fact that the electricity never arrived due to the war; it didn’t come till after. And everyone used to cry when the men marched to the railway station, as we were never sure which of them would return.

When the Americans came along we were moved out of the barracks; they used to give us silk stockings, sweets and cigarettes, so they were popular! When we were courting during the war we went to the pictures or chatted on our bicycles. Joyce was engaged twice, but our father didn’t approve of one of the men, and he really hit the roof when she brought an American home! Mary had an American friend too, but sadly he was shot on D-Day and couldn’t walk after that. Joyce got married during the war; by a stroke of luck George, her intended, drew lots for leave and managed to come home from Burma for a wedding. Because George was still in Burma the celebrations on VE day were subdued, he had a terrible time in the Japanese camps. Mary was courting Rob, her future husband, during the war and one time they were on the golf course on the road to Calne; suddenly in the distance Bath went up in flames as it was being heavily bombed, this was sometime in 1944 and was Mary’s most memorable singular moment during the war, it was such a horrid feeling.

We had Italian and German prisoners of war staying on our farm, and we used to get special rations for the Italians, spaghetti. The Italians we had staying with us were nice, but so lazy, however the German chap was a very good worker and when the war was over he begged us to let him stay, but he had to return to East Germany. Once the war was over we learnt that there had been a plot amongst the prisoners of war interned in the camps on the edge of Devizes town to try and break out, but it had been found out in time. It makes you wonder what else was going on that we had no idea about.

After D-Day we knew the end was near, but we could never have won the war without Churchill and his inspiring speeches, which cheered us up and made us all believe we could do it.

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