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Molly’s wartime experiences took her into some unusual, an sometimes dangerous, situations.

ATS memories

All our troops were back from France and our camp was no longer needed at Southampton. We were told we were going down to Somerset, that’s all we knew. We went by train to a little village and we were taken to a field where there were lots of little tents. Soldiers there met us and took us to a field of about an acre and said ‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to put up your own tents.’ They seemed to be enjoying the fact but they didn’t realise that most of us had been camping with the guides anyway. We put them up and made them ship-shape and then had to put a marquee up. We did that alright too. Then we discovered that this camp was all tents and it was all field work. We settled down to it and got into a routine and earned the men’s respect eventually as the cooking got better! Even though they were only field kitchens lots of us had been in the Guides and we found we quite liked it. I got to quite like cooking breakfast out in the open air. We had joined the army and said we would do anything the men did and that’s what we did.

The soldiers were there for two weeks’ course and then they went to Egypt and a lot of them went on to become Desert Rats. So we all the time had movement and you would be just walking off for a bit of time off and you would be called back because a new lot were coming in.

All day the Beaufors, Ack Ack guns were going all day. They used to practice firing at a plane with a target on. ‘Very brave pilot’ I used to think and they used to hit the target or the plane sometimes but they never ever brought the plane down. I think they used to change the pilots every now and again.

The funny thing was, it rained all that summer and so there was quite a few hilarious scenes. It was really lovely though down there, but busy.

It was rather crude, the things we had to cook on and where we were was primitive. It was more or less out in the open air and there was just a long strip of corrugated iron for shelter. We had to wash up in basins and just swill it away.

By the end of the summer we had settled in well and the Sergeant Major was quite helpful but then we were told they were building huts for us. We moved into the huts for the winter which was just as well although that was pretty rough.

There was a time when we were expecting invasion and the men had to lie down all night along the cliffs and we used to take them a bit of tea. Anyway it turned out that there wasn’t going to be an invasion and they went somewhere else.

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