大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Doreen Bennett on behalf of Geraldine Beryl Browning, the author and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

MY TEENAGE MEMORIES

I was 16 years old two days after the war was declared on 3 September 1939. I remember sitting at the table that morning at 11 o鈥檆lock and listening to the radio with the rest of my family and wondering why my mother started to cry at the news. I later realised that she had lost her fianc茅e in the 1914-18 war, so she knew the heartbreak that wars can cause.

As for myself, the first two years were very exciting, lots of new boy friends from various parts of England and my girl friends and I were enjoying ourselves. One thing that does remain with me though was walking down to Par Station one day and seeing so many troop trains going through, full of soldiers all looking so tired and dishevelled, some of them hanging out of the windows asking us if we had any cigarettes but neither my friend nor I smoked so we could not help. I do remember two of them gave us letters and asked us if we would put stamps on them and post them off, which we did. These were some of the Dunkirk survivors returning home.

After a while my Dad got me a job down at Par Harbour where they were ship building, they were all wooden boats. I think they were used for mine sweeping. I was put in the paint shop and I used to hate having to paint the bilges, as the workers above used to spit down into them but we just painted over it with black bitumen paint and did the best we could. We girls used to do the undercoating whilst the men did the top finishing coats, but I enjoyed it and made many new friends.

When I was 19, I received a letter 鈥渃alling up papers鈥� they were known as and I had to go into St Austell for an interview. I really wanted to go into the WAAF but was told I was already doing war work so had to stay where I was, however a little while after, I was told that I was being sent to Gloucester to a RAF maintenance unit which supplied spare parts for all different types of aircraft. We were kept very busy as it was the build up to the invasion and the most memorable night of my life was hearing and seeing all those planes droning above us on their way to France that night. We were billeted in a YWCA hostel and we were all outside in our pyjamas peering up into the sky watching the outlines of all those planes going over. I鈥檒l never forget the sound of them.

War is a terrible thing, so many lives lost and people injured but it made me grow up and realise we must never let it happen again.

I met so many people who altered my life completely, made new friends which lasted a lifetime and made me realise what a good life I had living in Cornwall that I always wanted to come back home to live which I did in 1963 after marrying an ex-serviceman in1947.

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