大象传媒

I finished my story of evacuation to Buckinghamshire as I left school in July 1940 aged 16 1/2. The exam for a place with the London County Council wouldn't be till October, so in the mean time I applied to work as a temporary clerk in the Civil Service. I was sent to the Ministry of Works which was about to move from its office in Storeys Gate, Whitehall to Lambeth Bridge house, a tall, modern office building. I was now living at home with my family in Ealing. Dad was a taxi driver, my brother an Executive Officer in the Valuation Brach of Customs and Excise, so both were working in Central London and continued to do so throughout the months of the Blitz. I travelled by District Line from Northfields Station to Westminster and then walked over Westminster Bridge and along the pathway between St.Thomas' Hospital and the river. My job was in the Registry. filing documents and running messages. It also entailed answering the phone which made me very nervous as of course like most people we hadn't a phone at home and I hadn't had much experience of using one even in a public phone box. In those you had to press Button A when your call was answered or Button B if it wasn't to get your money back. If you were lucky, there might be more than your pennies to come back.
My Dad and my brother were both Air Raid Wardens. On the Saturday of the first raid in London, we had all gone to the cinema in Ealing - though I can't remember what the film was. Suddenly the film stopped and a message came up on the screen for all Civil Defence members to report to their posts. Dad and Fred left, Mother and I wondered whether to follow them but the film restarted and we stayed. This was when the docks were bombed but we were of course far away from there and nothing happened then in Ealing.
We had an Anderson air raid shelter in our back garden and started to use it but it got flooded and unusable, so instead we put the camp beds we had used on holidays into the front room and slept there all through the months of that first blitz. We were very lucky as the worst that happened was the french windows blowing open when a house at the back of us was bombed. We were nervous about being caught in the bath if bombed so had baths in the daytime at weekends - most of the bombing was in the night.
I used to take sandwiches for lunch and sit in the little park by Lambeth Bridge. I remember watching the trails in the sky during the Battle of Britain. During daylight air raid alarms we sheltered in the basement of our offices and during lunch breaks a flag went up to tell us to return and go to the shelter. Often the Underground line near the river would be shut and I would have to take a bus to or from Sloane Square station, the nearest open.To be honest, I thought this rather fun and sometimes stayed on the bus all the way to Hammersmith and then got the train. Once I was given a lift in a police car.
As I said, I used to walk along the river by St.Thomas' and I well remember the morning after the hospital was bombed. I walked over broken glass that morning.
In October, I took the exam for the London County Council. They didn't want to risk losing all their intake so instead of one examination centre, we took the exam near home. There were two other girls from my school taking the exam,all of us passed. Sheila went into the Education Dept., Norma and I into the Comptroller's Dept. (Treasurer's), but we didn't start till the following April so I stayed on at the Ministry of Works. In fact, I toyed with the idea of not taking up the offer of a post at the L.C.C but there was no certainty that the job at the Ministry would be permanent after the war, so on April 3rd, 1941 I became a General Grade Clerk at the munificent salary of 28 shillings plus 1/6 war bonus - 拢1.47 - per week, with a promise of a 4 shilling rise each year. That was a girl's wage, boys started at 30 shillings and had a rise of 5 shillings each year. Equal pay didn't come till the 1950s. I think.
There is nothing very exciting to write about this time. It was a junior office job, only unusual because the office was in a large mansion in the country - Coopers Hill, Englefield Green between Egham and Windsor - and because I was still living at home in Ealing I had a one and a half hour jounney by train and bus to get there much longer than the usual commute then. There was one journey home that I would never forget though. I left the office at about six o'clock, got the bus down to Staines, expecting to get another to Hounslow and the Piccadilly line train to Boston Manor and so home about seven thirty as usual, but Staines was enveloped in a thick fog and of course in 1942 it was still blackout. No bus running. Someone suggested the train to Twickenham so I did that. It was still foggy at Twickenham but the trolleybuses were running, so on to that to Brentford. But the trolleybus from there wasn't running so I had to walk the rest of the way home, about a mile or so, I finally got home at ten o'clock, the journey had taken four hours. My father had gone out to look for me and nearly got lost himself!
In February 1943 I was nineteen, girls were then called up at nineteen and a half for service in the Forces, factory work or nursing. The Council allowed girls to volunteer for service at nineteen which meant you could choose what to do. My best friend at work decided to do nursing, Norma volunteered for the Wrens. My father knew a man whose daughter was in the ATS at an office in London but living at home. I was still rather shy and dreading being called up. I knew I didn't want to do nursing and didn't like the idea of factory work, so this sounded ideal for me and I applied to join.Next instalment.

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