大象传媒

The clouds of war were gathering over Europe when my mother, my sister Irene and I joined the ARP as Air Raid Wardens. I was seventeen years old and my sister was fifteen. We attended lectures in a police station near Old Swan in Liverpool and learned of the various gases that we might encounter; mustard gas (the smell of musty hay); phosgene gas and others that I have now forgotten, and we wore respirators in a special gas chamber filled with tear gas. Later, we went to houses in our neighbourhood fitting gas masks on the local inhabitants, and inquired about babies in their homes for they would need special respirators. It was a very exciting time albeit rather frightening. What lay ahead for all of us?

War breaks out

In 1938 when Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, returned to England from Munich brandishing a piece of paper, "Peace in Our Time", the war had been averted. However in the following months it was inevitable that there would be a war against Germany. On September 3rd, 1939, we were in our back garden digging a trench under a pear tree, for war had then seemed imminent. My father therefore decided that we should be prepared and so supervised the undertaking.

While we were digging the trench, Neville Chamberlain came on the radio to tell the nation that Britain had declared war on Germany. The trench was never finished for we were to use other forms of shelter. With the declaration of war came the 'blackout', and the 'blackout curtains'. All the windows were taped to prevent the glass from shattering if a bomb landed nearby, food was rationed, and yet for some time it was peaceful in Britain. Balloon barrages were installed, air raid posts were built of concrete all over the city, and everyone carried their gas masks with them wherever they went.

Mother became an Air Raid Warden in the ARP, but now my sister and I were declared too young for this important service! In 1940 when the Germans eventually started to bomb Liverpool, many schoolchildren were evacuated to the country. I had always loved the sea and admired the Royal Navy, so I joined the Sea Rangers and rowed in the Liverpool docks where we learned to ship oars, salute passing ships and row in choppy waters by the Pier Head. Sometimes foreign sailors, French and other nationalities, waved to us from their ships that were in port. We required special passes to enter the docks in wartime; there were many Allied ships and sailors in port, which made us feel very important.

Father joined the Home Guard in 1940, and we were delighted because we naturally thought that he would be a private - at least at first - which would make him feel modest, perhaps, and not in a commanding position - we hoped. However because of his Great War record when he was an officer, he was immediately made a captain, and shortly afterwards he became an adjutant! He thoroughly enjoyed his role, socially and in all ways, and was an excellent adjutant, respected and well liked.

The Blitz

Liverpool was very severely bombed. We were given a 'lean-to' shelter, called a Morrison Shelter, which we erected in our breakfast room, and later replaced by a table shelter, also of heavy steel, which we put in our dining room, but we slept under it on very few occasions. When the heavy bombardments started we shared an Anderson shelter with our next door neighbours.

There were many tragic bombings very close to us. Many young people died in a large underground public shelter on Queen's Drive near Broadgreen Road, when it had a direct hit by a bomb. They had been leaving a local dance hall, one that I had been to several times, and they had stopped to take shelter when the bombing started. Mother and other wardens were some of the first persons on the scene, and I remember being there with Irene and my father who seemed to take charge at first. It was a tragic, unforgettable scene.

One day after the air raid warning had sounded, my father, my two brothers Harry and Gordon, and I were at the front door looking at a plane in the sky, thinking it was British, when suddenly we heard a bomb whistling down. My father pushed us into the hall and hurriedly shut the door. There was a loud bang. The bomb had landed close by. Mother dashed into the hall from the kitchen and Irene who had been upstairs ran down quickly and landed on our sprawling bodies on the floor.

Nursing auxiliaries

At this time my sister and I took a St John's Ambulance course, and then later went as nursing auxiliaries to Broadgreen Hospital for a short time. The hospital was full of injured service men, and also air raid victims. Irene was on a ward where she helped with many wounded men, but I was sent to an officer's ward. My duties ranged from private rooms for high ranking officers, flower arranging, bed baths etc - not entirely what I had anticipated!

One night hundreds of incendiary bombs lit up the night sky, and one could hear the crackling as they landed and started fires. We were in the next door shelter, but my parents were dashing here and there with the other ARP wardens. One night my father ran to help an elderly neighbour, and in the garden, which was in darkness, hurt his neck by running into a wire clothes line. Another neighbour who lived across the road had to stand in his bath to put the fire out in his loft. In every street there were buckets of sand ready for such an emergency. As we lived in Broadgreen many miles from the main area and docks of Liverpool, we did not experience the severe bombing and loss of life that less fortunate areas did.

The Land Army

Most children eventually leave home, and so I became an adult in 1941 at age twenty years, when complete with a large bag and dressed in Land Army uniform, I boarded a train for 'Reaseheath', an Agricultural College near Nantwich in Cheshire. Not all Land Girls were fortunate to have such training, and I enjoyed every moment of my stay there. I remember the excitement that I felt, the sense of freedom and wondering what adventures lay ahead, as I travelled in the train to my destination.

My reason for joining the Land Army was because I loved the countryside and animals, and wanted to help in the war effort. The uniform was very attractive, and the whole world seemed to beckon me, full of adventure - a new life begun. We scythed, plucked chickens, milked cows by hand, rode cart horses, cleaned shippons and stables, made silage, helped to clip the sheep, fed the animals including bulls and pigs, learnt how cheese and cream were made in the vast dairies, dug ditches. In fact we were given an excellent grounding in farm work. We also had lessons concerning crops etc. in the classrooms during the day.

My first farm was at Hevingham in Norfolk, where I worked during the very hot summer of 1941, stooking corn and hay-making. I adored Norfolk - it was such a lovely county which seemed so isolated in time from the England that I knew. It was still in feudal times; the lord of the manor; small villages whose occupants rarely left their villages; where visits to Norwich were almost unheard of, and the war seemed so far away. The men on the farm were very kind and friendly, and the days passed happily in the sunshine. In those days horses were mainly used on the farms, although we had one tractor, so farm work was very quiet and peaceful.

My father came to see me after I had an accident with a runaway horse and cart. I had jumped off the cart when the horse bolted after it had been frightened by meeting a van in the narrow lane, having no idea what to do with a bolting horse! I rolled down the high bank and remember the wheels of the cart just missing my head - luckily I sustained only bruises.

Later I worked for a short time at a small turkey farm, where I also looked after a few riding horses and milked cows. I spent a very lonely 21st birthday at this farm. Later I was sent to a farm near the Norfolk Broads, complete with a disused windmill. I was often alone all day, hoeing and weeding crops and have never been as lonely as this time in Norfolk. As is often the case, the reality of work is not as interesting as the learning at college or the preliminary course.

At this time in 1941, my brother Harry joined the Merchant Navy as a Second Wireless Operator at aged 16, and travelled in convoy to the Argentine and to South Africa. The crossings were dangerous, for many ships were torpedoed with heavy loss of life. In 1944 he enlisted in the RAF and became a Flight Engineer - co pilot in a Lancaster Bomber at age 19.

Closer to home

I meanwhile moved nearer home to Lancashire. At one farm in Childwall, Liverpool, not far from my home, where there were also a few girls, we mostly picked potatoes. About twenty-four Italian prisoners-of-war, guarded by an English soldier with a rifle, arrived one day to help with the harvest and also to pick potatoes. They cheered up our very boring days and we found them very friendly - if not rather lazy concerning picking potatoes! Liverpool office girls also came to help with the potato picking, and arrived in a large truck. They also enjoyed meeting the Italians!

My brother, Gordon, was now at the Holt Secondary School and many of his school friends also helped with the harvest of potatoes - it was a joy to have him with me on the farm.

There must have been an awful lot of potatoes at Rimmer's Farm! Two of the Italians now lived at the farm in an old stone shippon. They were Angelo from Rome and Novello from Pisa. It was a very sad moment when the land girls left the farm and Gordon and I said goodbye to Angelo and Novello.

Eventually after working for four years on the land, I decided that I had had enough. My days as a Land Girl came to an end in 1945, when I spent six months at home after recovering from the flu, feeling very run down and quite lost.

The ATS

I decided to join the army to be an architectural draughtswoman like my sister who had joined the ATS in 1943 and was stationed in London. I applied and was accepted - and then the war in Europe ended! It was August 1945. But the war in the Far East had yet to be won, and recruits were still needed in the Forces.

My basic training near Runcorn was a very happy period in my life, for I enjoyed 'square bashing', unlike many of my fellow recruits. I loved the discipline on the parade ground, the exercise and the uniform. There were no vacancies as an architectural draughtswoman, but there were positions available as topographical draughtswomen. I was sent to 'Wynstay Hall', Ruabon, North Wales, with another recruit.

The training lasted three months. We had an intensive map-drawing course, which I enjoyed for I was in my element draughting; learning to use a stereoscope; roaming the lovely Welsh hills; contouring; plotting houses in Llangollen; learning to survey with a theodolite and drawing maps. The course, which included men as well as women Royal Engineers, was held in the Hall, our instructor being Sergeant 'Spud' Plater formally of the Ordnance Survey offices in Southampton. One day I went riding with Diana, a friend, on one of the thoroughbred horses from the Wynstay stables. Later when other ATS tried to emulate us, the stables became off limits. When we had finished our course, all the women ATS - now topographical draughtswomen - were posted to RAF Benson near Wallingford, Oxfordshire, where we joined the small company of Royal Engineer draughtswomen and other ATS women already stationed there. We were an army topographical section, the majority being in the air force.

We lived in small brick houses, rather like council houses with four women per room. There were probably sixteen women living in one house which contained a small kitchen and a bathroom. The houses were very cold in winter with only a small fireplace in each bedroom. We joined the RAF personnel for meals in large mess buildings where the food was plentiful. Each day we were taken by truck to a large old house near Ewelme which was famous for its watercress beds. The men and women worked side by side in the cold drawing offices in the winter plotting aerial photographs onto maps. The photographs had been taken in sequence by aerial photographical reconnaissance, in order to be seen stereoscopically.

It was a perfect life, swimming across the River Thames at Wallingford, rowing in the Thames, long country walks, playing tennis, camp dances, badminton in the gym, and visits to the Oxford New Theatre in Oxford, by truck. One could take time during work hours to attend art classes - many of the women were ex-art students from the Slade so the standard was very high. I too was very interested in art. There were also French classes and musical appreciation classes. Naturally we would attend as many classes as we could to make a break from plotting! I have often thought that this period of my life was the most perfect one, because we had a variety of sports and other interests. This is how life should be - no cleaning, washing or cooking! I would also go running in the evening on the Benson runways, which were then deserted. It was a marvellous feeling of freedom to run with the wind in the dark across the vast open spaces.

One morning I went with two friends for a flight in a Lancaster bomber over the south of England. I sat behind the Flight Engineer - co pilot's seat - and imagined Harry sitting in the same position when his plane flew over Germany. A few days later we heard that a couple of female Air Force Officers, their hair concealed under their caps, had been noticed leaving one of the 'Lancs' after a flight, and had been reprimanded. After that episode it was forbidden for the females to fly with the male crew. Once again Diana and I had taken the initiative!

Later we were all posted to a camp near Oxford where we were housed in depressing cold Nissen huts which we shared with many other ATS of various occupations. Our offices were now in a very large well known Hall called Nuneham Courtenay in the village of the same name. A large staircase led to the first floor where we had our drawing offices. The grounds were extensive, heavily treed and full of daffodils in the spring which grew on the long grassy banks that sloped down to the River Thames. Here in peacetime the Oxford Blues practiced rowing for the University Boat Races.

Demobilisation

I had been in the ATS now for two years and the personnel who joined the section were gradually being demobilised. When I was demobbed, I was sent to a centre near Swindon in the bitterly cold winter of January 1947. Our huts were unheated and extremely cold, so we slept in sweaters, socks, and as many blankets as we could find, and had to wash in cold water. The hut where we congregated at night was lit by one small coke fire, ably tended by a German POW. The lucky few were the people who arrived early and sat in their great coats close to the fire.

And so the war ended for me. It seemed that 'now was the winter of our discontent,' for it was a very difficult period to adjust to civilian life once again.

To sum up the war years in England for myself: most of the time I was far away from the devastation and bombing raids that people in the main cities had to endure, and life for a young woman was often very interesting by meeting young English men in the Navy, Army and Air Force as well as from other countries, Canadian, Polish, American, Dutch, etc. that one would never meet in peacetime. Many young women had the opportunity to travel to other countries and meet other nationalities, which was unheard of in my mother's time, and so the war years produced a new freedom for women, and occupations undreamed of prior to the war.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.