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10 — Alec and Joyce Sheppard talk about their wartime: Alec, a trained craft teacher, as an artillery specialist in the army, and Joyce as a nurse in the psychiatric service.

“(First) I was in the field artillery, I was in the Dudley Battery, and we were sent to Enville Hall. All along Kinver Edge we were amazed ‘cos we went through the woods where nobody else was supposed to go, and there were all these doors on to the caves, and some were open and each side were Merlin engines and the rest of it. (Safe from bombing) We weren’t supposed to know about that you see.

At the outbreak of war I got called up straight away, and when I saw the Deputy Director of Education he says I make you a promise, he says we will make your pay up from what you are getting in the Army, to what you should be getting as teaching, and so right through the War, they sent a fill-up cheque to my mother to bank for me.
I was an artillery specialist and surveyor, and that went on for a while. Then we were in Northern Ireland, I had to do some surveying up in the hills, and news came back, report to Baker Street, London. I says, what the heck for? He says I can’t tell you, you had better go down and see ‘em, and it was this hush hush do, it was for the underground movement in Europe. And so I went down and had the interview, and there was a captain asking me questions and the rest of it, and in the end I says this is…, you are not telling me anything sir, I say, what exactly is it supposed to do? He says I can’t tell you, it’s secret. So I says well if it’s secret I don’t want it, you see. A voice at the back, a colonel, says Sergeant, you are in the bloody army, you do what you are told!

So that’s how I came to be working with the Underground, and I got down to Wembley where the…, no, went to Welwyn first, Old Welwyn. There was a wooden hut in there, and there were what, 12 ATS girls doing a little bit of soldering and stuff, and 4 Corps of Signals men, and a Staff Sergeant, Signals. So I went along, and he said have you done any of this stuff? And I said no I haven’t. So he gave me a circuit diagram and bits and pieces, and says well see what you can do with that, and I worked it out and soldered it up, and he looked at the joints, ‘cos they didn’t want dry joints, and oh, he says, you’ll do, and I says oh thanks. He says you are taking over next week, I am going! [laughter] And so I was more or less in charge of the little wooden hut.

Then they decided to go into Europe in a big way, and so we took over the Bontex
Knitting, Bontex Cleaning Works, the Ruislip Cigarette factory, and Wembley Park. Because I had got metalwork and woodwork experience, I ran the radio assembly and also kept an eye on the sheet metalwork section for the.., well we made the containers.

So then the Colonel came along; he said got a problem for you, he said we are now going to start dropping sets into Burma, they have got to be waterproof, so I thought oh crikey! So I had to design a tin that was waterproof, with clips and rubber backed and all the rest of it, and we tried them first with bricks in the containers and chucked them in the static tank, and left them there for a certain time, they came out, took ‘em apart, checked how much water was in the rest of it till we’d cured it, got the seals right, and then we started manufacturing these waterproof containers. The next thing was, they were dropped to chaps in Burma; what they did, the set was in and then when the Japs would get too close, they chucked these in the rivers or under weeds in the rivers and left ‘em there and then they came back and took them out again, and they still worked.

(To protect the radios) We had horsehair ‘coffins’. And so what you did, we had six 6 foot by 2 or 3 foot wide one inch rubber mats, and we rolled the set up in that, and then strapped it with the usual strappings, and then put them inside this horsehair coffin and shut that, and then you dropped ‘em. (They were valves of course in those days) but the rubber packing that we put in, it took it. And so we more or less supplied the Chindits and all the rest of it, with sets as well.
But it got, in a way it got a bit boring, ‘cos we… the girls ATS, the WAAFS were doing these sets and the work was beginning to slow up, and I went and saw the officer, and I said we have got to do something, they’re losing the enthusiasm. So he got one of the chaps that had been into Burma to come and give them a chat, and after that we had no trouble, I mean morale went up, that was it.
(I was doing that) more or less till the end of the war till I got demobbed.

We had one or two brainy officers, well they were civvies with a WD Commission, and attached to no unit, and they were the whiz kids, you, what, there was Captain Lane. The girls would come in and say we are short of 13 resistors and none in the stores, so I went and checked the stores, he says supplies haven’t sent them in yet, we’re stuck you see. So then I used to go to Captain Lane and say we’re in trouble sir, we haven’t got certain resistors you see. I said they won’t be in for two or three days. All right he said, leave it with me, and he’d come and say look, if you put two of these together, and put it in, that’ll work, and it was really good.
And then we had a failure. We had a REME officer who’d blotted his copybook, and for some unknown reason they’d dumped him on us. And his mess, you think anybody could bend an anti-aircraft gun barrel? He did! What happened was, he was in charge of a gun site, and the ratchet got stuck, they went round. So ‘brainy’, he gets the quads out, two lorries connected to one another, ties a hawser round the barrel, ‘cos the barrel’s horizontal, and pulls, and he bent the barrel! We had got the only anti-aircraft gun in the area that would fire round corners! So he, more or less, was sent to us as supply officer.

[Joyce Sheppard now tells her story]:
Well I was called up in 1943, because I was working at a firm like the Co-op, at Head Office, and I was helping with the points for food, and ordering the flour and sugar and stuff, and they got me nine months’ deferment, ‘cos over 21 by the middle of the war you had to go, and they simply sent…, in the end, a married woman of the same age to do my job. Now because I had been in the Red Cross and done home nursing and first aid, I was allowed to go as a VAD instead of the ATS, and I got through the medical apart from my foot, was A2, because I have always had a bit of trouble with that. So I still carried on as a shorthand typist/secretary job and I was called up eventually after Chester to Hagley Road, Birmingham where I stayed until I was demobbed in 1944, wasn’t it? November 1945, working for the Area Psychiatrist. Downstairs was the camp reception station, where all the medicals were done, and if you were on leave you reported to, upstairs in front of the flat was the colonel in charge of the Medical Board, and the next office was his secretary, was a soldier, and the psychiatrist was at the back part of the flat overlooking the playground of this St George’s School I think, and so I was really like the medical secretary; I made all the appointments and got all the documents ready, and put the…It was mostly Army, although if anybody was on leave and in a bad way, the psychiatrist would see them and I sent them to the waiting room, called them in when he was ready, and then of course he dictated the reports to me, which I typed up, filed etc., and then it was very interesting.

Until January 1944, I could go in Officers’ Clubs, I really hadn’t any definite rank, but in 1944 I had to go to Leamington Spa and sign on under the Army, or come out, when I would have gone in the ATS, so I signed on, and I stayed in; I was attached then to the Royal Army Medical Corps. And sometimes the psychiatrist had to go from Birmingham to Prestatyn Holiday Camp, and I went with him, interviewed a lot of the soldiers who were stationed there, and over to Shrewsbury, all sorts of rather nice places.

Mainly a lot of the cases were from Dunkirk, a lot of them had an anxiety neurosis from being in the water a long time, and then a lot of them who were coming back from the Far East or the Middle East, their wives had gone elsewhere, and they just mainly wanted a chat you know, and it was most interesting actually.

We didn’t get any civilians, it was all Army or Forces. But I knew where all the prisoner of war camps were, and also there was a very big pioneer corps stationed out at Long Marston, and they used to come up about every three months to see whether they could be upgraded to use a rifle; actually quite pleased if they got upgraded.

And we went out as far as Rugby, Oswestry, and right down beyond Ledbury, it was quite a big area so I knew where all the units were you see. (We travelled by car) or those Jeep things in those days.
(I had to learn a lot of medical terminology) well it’s like learning another language really, which was very good. From February ’43 until November ’45 I worked for 14 of them, sometimes I had a major on his own, and then another trainee, so I got to know quite a few of them. Of course they were all doctors who were trained in, you know, nerves during the war, and we did get some very sad and some very interesting cases.

Yes it was (enjoyable), nice people. I ought not to say it really, but one of them was Percy Sugden! He was…, I forget what his name was, oh God, it’s gone now, but one time I thought I will write to him, but I thought I won’t, because he came up, and he was…, I think he was working in the Army as a driver for the Royal Army Service Corps, and he wasn’t very happy, and the psychiatrist said to him, what’s the trouble? He said well I don’t like the job I am in; he said well we can’t all do what we’re doing in civvy street! So what was it? And he said a comedian! So he said well you don’t look like you’re going to make many people laugh today! I can’t remember what his real name is now, it’s gone, but I can’t remember any more famous ones, there were one or two but I don’t know.

(Perhaps just couldn’t cope with service life) that’s right. Oh we had a lot of ATS girls as well. Well I don’t think they really intended to commit suicide, they just wanted to draw attention to themselves, they took Aspirins, a bottle of Aspirins.
Oh yes, yes (we found some very unhappy people). Well I must say, although it was war, I really had a most enjoyable and interesting time, and my parents lived in Leeds then, so I was called up from Leeds. I think that’s about all I can think of.

[Alec Sheppard concludes] It was interesting. At times a bit boring, because it was more or less factory life you see, and one or two idiotic things we did. The trouble was that the two factories we took over were on the North Circular Road alongside the seven bridges over the Road, and you can guess what a target that was for the bombers. And it was a case of, we…, if there was a raid we had to work until we got the red warning, then it was everybody out to the shelters. And one of the corporals and myself had to go into the ladies’ toilet, climb on the toilet top, push open the manhole cover, and go up on the flat roof, do roof spotting. And it was a case we had a bell to ring if the bombers were up above, we still would stop up there and watch ‘em, whilst everybody else went to the shelters.

Oh yes, (a bit hazardous) and I raised a point, I said well what happens if we can’t get through the ladies’ toilet? So in the end they put a long ladder up the outside, for us to get on.
(The factories close by were bombed). The nearest one was…, there was a playing field about 200 years away, and they dropped a couple in there, and they went further up the road and dropped some there, but I couldn’t understand they never hit any of the bridges. There was Willesden Junction, railway junction, they tried for that and they missed it. There were the 7 bridges over the North Circular Road and they missed them all, but the poor housing estates got it. The worst one was, there was a searchlight viewing not far from us, and one night they were really good, they got this aircraft smack in the beam and they wouldn’t let it go, so he came right down the beam then let his bombs go off, and he wiped the searchlight out, there were bits of ATS all over the place, and we had to get a squad and go round and look round for the bits and pieces you know, put ‘em in body bags, which was a little bit disconcerting if you had a weak stomach. But that was the only one.
(After demob I went back to teaching.)

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