大象传媒

16 YEAR OLD GIRL LIAISON OFFICER
That is what they would call the title today, or something more posh.
I lived around Winstanley Drive, Western Park, Hinckley Road area of Leicester. I attended Folville Rise School at the start of the war, and I was a milk prefect, where I took milk into the air raid shelter. We had to hand operate ( crank handle style ) a large wheel; this kept the air flowing and fresh inside the air raid shelter.

I started work at 14 for Jackson鈥檚 of London who brought their staff to Leicester as a tailor making uniforms for the services. The factory was down side of a JITTY
( Alleyway) near Boots in Gallowtree Gate. I used to get extra pint of milk for my occupation work. We used to work 8 am to 6pm daily. One night we left work to be faced with a complete Blackout. It was both a shock and surprise, for we had to hold hands in this pitch black place and feel our way to the bus stop. We were not sure if we got the right bus or not, the numbers were blacked out. Finally I got home at Western Park. When I was 16, we had to join either army, navy, air cadets. So I joined the A.R.P. I became a messenger for the ARP. There was a large group of us, a proper little regiment. As soon as the sirens went, even in the middle of the night, we had to get up and cycle down Western Park to the ARP Depot. Even amongst my Mothers protest, I had to go and do my duty and report. If any communications went down, we had to cycle around and deliver messages, even during air raids, by hand. 16 year old girl riding out in the middle of the night, makes me shudder now.
One night I had to got out from Winstanley Drive area to top of Western Park where a search light was manned. This particular search light had an enemy aircraft in its beam. The aircraft swooped down and started machine gunning the position.
Everyone was shouting to me as I cycled furiously to dodge the machine gun bullets. 鈥� Come on Iris, hurry up.鈥� I didn鈥檛 need telling twice I can tell you. I finally got to the depot with my dinky hair curlers still intact under my tin helmet. What a relief.

My hair was feeling good the following day as I reported for work as a uniform tailor. Suddenly, as sometimes happened, we heard on the grapevine, that bananas and oranges were to be available on the nearby Leicester Market. We quickly down tools, shouted to the boss, we were just going to get some oranges, and off we ran up the jetty.
My eldest sister worked in munitions and my brother got trapped at Clarence House, Humberstone Gate, one night during air raid, he was attending night school. My dad also could not get home.
Sometimes as ARP messengers we had to attend marching parades on Sunday鈥檚, and sometimes we enjoyed dances at weekends.
My brother, later in the war, joined the air cadets, he eventually became a pilot and served in Rhodesia, Africa. He used to write home letters to us, written on toilet paper. Thankfully, he no-one used it first!

鈥楾his story was submitted to the Peoples war site by Rod Aldwinckle of the CSV Action Desk on behalf of IRIS WHILES, and has been added to the site with his permission.. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions鈥�

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