大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by Jo Burn from 大象传媒 Radio Kent and has been added to the website on behalf of Margery Grant Smart with her permission. She fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I was 19 when war broke out. I wanted to join up and do my bit. I was walking up Oxford St in London one day when I just walked into the army office and signed up. By February I had taken the Kings Shilling.

I was sent to Leicester for six weeks training. I went to train with the Anti-Aircraft lot but worked in the office. I went to a camp where the men were trained to fire at a sleeve behind a plane. I wasn鈥檛 trained up though. Not being a woman.

On the first night I remember I just had three biscuits and two blankets and I was so cold. We had to have injections for smallpox and four other things but I can鈥檛 remember what they were. Then we did a ten-mile route march and I knocked the head off one of them. It got poison in it and I was taken poorly. Thing is though, if you was poorly then you wasn鈥檛 allowed home and the test was that if you could walk through the gate you were well enough. I wanted to go home so my friends walked me to the gate and I went through on my own and they picked me straight up the other side!! I got home though.

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