大象传媒

(This story has been submitted to the People's War website through the 大象传媒 East Video Nation project on behalf of Grace Simmonds and has been added to the site with her permission).

At the start of the Second World War, Grace was a member of the Dagenham Girl Pipers run by the Reverend Graves. The Pipers were members of ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association, which was set up during World War II to entertain the British Armed services. During the day Grace and some of the girls worked on farms around Essex, and went out with ENSA in the evenings.

GRACE'S STORY IN HER WORDS.

When the war first broke out and I came back as I had been away on holiday with my mum. Well I say holiday but it was hop picking, but I used to say I was visiting my aunty. I didn鈥檛 like it at all!

When I came back Mr Graves was a Reverend but we always referred to him as Mr Graves. He had a cottage in Great Samford which is a village close by and he said if the girls were on holiday or sick or whatever they could always go to the cottage and recuperate or whatever. So there were 5 of us who went to live there and we got jobs on the farms locally and I worked on a farm in Radwinter for Mr Bob Courtway who was a farmer. 3 of us worked on that particular farm and that kept us out of being called up for war work because we could then go out on ENSA part time and work on the farm during the day.

The thing I remember vividly was that we had to hoe this sugar beat field which is only really across the road from here actually. We had to do either jobs in the meantime if it was good weather and we needed to go out and do some hoeing and it took us about 3 months to do this big field and they dropped a bomb on it (she laughs) so you know that鈥檚 the thing I remember.

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