大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jenny Zmroczek of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Joan Plumb and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

During the war we lived in Kent. I lived with my Grandparents and they were farmers. Eventually both my Grandmother and Grandfather died so the place was sold off and my mother and I went back to a little place called Loke in Oxfordshire where she had been born. I was 21 and the war had just started. I decided to volunteer before being called up. I wanted some experience in driving 鈥� I had driven round the farm, but not on the roads. So I got myself a job in Oxford where there was somebody who could teach me to drive. I then applied for the Wrens, but they couldn鈥檛 offer me what I wanted. I then saw an advert in the Oxford Mail saying that they desperately wanted ambulance drivers, so I went for an interview and they put me through a test. They took me up a really narrow road and made me reverse but with an ambulance being longer than an ordinary vehicle I got stuck. I got out and told the police doing the test that because they had told me to go up there they could get it out. However, apart from that incident I had done well and I was accepted.

There were about ten of us in a shift, and we were billeted in a rugby club. We had ambulances that came from the First Wold War, and on one occasion I had to get out and leg it after one of them caught fire! We learned First Aid and then progressed onto such things as giving blood. There were many services around there which we serviced, as well as local hospitals and Prisoner of War camps. At one time we were involved in moving royalty. My Commandant was Joan Cooper as in Cooper鈥檚 marmalade. We were an extremely mixed bag but we worked hard. A time went on we got terribly busy and the chief of police came and asked if any of us could help drive the city police ambulance. I did this with three or four others, on my days off.

On one occasion I had to pick up someone with a policeman and while we were stopped at traffic lights I saw the doors open and the patient disappeared. The policeman threw off his hat and went after her but never found her.

We worked hard and played hard, going to dances and getting to know people. The servicemen would invite us and I met my husband Reg at a dance. It was his friend who started chatting me up, but half way through he said he knew Kent and I said I did too, so we started chatting. I asked whether he knew Oxford but he said he hadn鈥檛 been there long so I said I would show him around. We progressed from that, then he said he was going to take his Commission. We were engaged from April 1941 and got married in June 1942 in Oxford. The ambulance girls formed a guard of honour for me. We had no cakes and no material for a dress. I eventually got a bit of material after doing a favour for someone whose wife was in hospital having a baby. It was a lovely blue outfit and I bought a hat. You needed tokens for everything, and I had to buy the shirts for my uniform which took up a lot of my tokens.

I was staying with my cousin before I got married. I worked 24 hours on and then had 24 hours off. It suited her to have me there as it meant that she didn鈥檛 have to have evacuees. Oxford was still full of undergraduates and we used to go punting on the river. At night it was very dark and I used to come back from lectures in pitch black. One night I was certain someone was following me, so I turned round and faced him and told him not to come near me. It was a really tall man and I threatened to hit him with my helmet. Then I just ran back to the depot, and when I got there they said I looked like I鈥檇 seen a ghost.

There were loads of big houses in Oxford which had been turned into hospitals and convalescence homes. Most of our patients were service personnel and some of these might be suffering quite badly when I transported them. I remember stopping and asking someone the way somewhere once. He said that I couldn鈥檛 miss it as there was a kiosk by it. But I just couldn鈥檛 find it. Eventually I got out and walked around until I found the small kiosk on a wooden poll. I felt really sorry for the serviceman in the back of the ambulance who was longing to get to where we were going. I never thought it was a good idea that we worked alone on the ambulances. There wasn鈥檛 even anyone in the back to look after the patient.

When you drove an ambulance you were allowed to go through traffic lights if you had a patient, but if you had no patient you had to obey them. That made you a sitting target for all the men who had been out on the razzle who used to open the door. I used to take my heavy shoes off and bang them with them. It was either me or them and I decided I would look after myself.

I took a young man up to the burns hospital one day. He had a lot of burns and he鈥檇 lost his arm. It was quite a long trip so I asked him if he鈥檚 like to stop and have a drink. As we sat down I asked an older person to ask him whether he would like some help with going to the loo. We learned very quickly how to deal with the situations which arose.

While I was driving we used to have the occasional weekend off. Reg was on pre-operative training and I was going to meet him in Chichester. I got to Oxford station and a very elderly porter pointed me to the next train. I got on board and found it full of sailors. Going to the next carriage I found that full of sailors too. It turned out that the train was going straight to Portsmouth. I told the sailor that I wanted to get out at Chichester and they said it was alright because the train slowed at the points and they could put me out! They threw my bag out first, and then lifted me through the window. It was dreadful because the train was going quite fast.

Other weekends I went to see Reg in Tolfiny in North Wales. We stayed with a Mrs Evans who looked after us wonderfully. She was full one time and offered us a cottage across the road which had a bed in it. He gave us a candle, but hadn鈥檛 told us that in the middle of the cottage floor was a well. The floor sloped towards it, and Reg caught hold of me otherwise I might have fallen in.

There were a lot of cadets around and one of them said to us that if we asked the Colonel we could borrow a bicycle. It was so beautiful around North Wales that we thought this a good idea. We were out for a ride when we heard a load of motorbikes coming. We got off the bike, threw it in a ditch and then jumped in ourselves. It was not too safe being on the road with 30 or so young men learning to ride motorbikes!

We sometimes got the train to Barmouth and I was the only woman amongst so many army cadets. They picked me up and put me on the train and then they started singing dirty songs. Somebody said 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lady here鈥�. Reg found me eventually but it was a hilarious time.

In 1942 I had measles. At that time I had a room in a house where a lady held a school and I think I may have picked the measles up from the children. I was very ill. Thank God a friend came to see me. She found me in a dreadful state, so went off and got the doctor who said I must go into hospital as I had a mastoid. They put me in an isolation hospital. Reg was away in Wales when he received a telegram saying that I was ill. He came to look after me. Later I had chicken pox, and after that I picked up influenza. I went down something dreadful then, and must have been in bed for three months. I went to my mother-in-maw鈥檚 by train. By then I was pregnant, but terribly ill. I felt so ill that I didn鈥檛 even care when a doctor said that I was a dying woman. There was very little I could eat but Reg鈥檚 Mum use to get me a bit of fish or a piece of an orange. My temperature was so high that I couldn鈥檛 have a normal birth. The doctor rang Reg and said that she could save either me or the baby. He said to save me. He was given leave for two months to be with me, and both me and the baby survived.

We lived in outer London then and it was absolute misery being bombed and bombed. I didn鈥檛 like the Morrison shelter as I felt claustrophobic. The bombing was unmerciful, but after that the Doodlebugs came and they were even worse as you could hear the engine stop but you had no idea where it was going to explode.

My uncle at that time had several cottages in Loke and suggested that I went to stay in one of them that he had had done up. There were no modern conveniences, but it was heaven to be away fro the bombing. I could get food from the farm and my water came from a well. The lavatory was a mile down the garden. There was no telephone in the village and no electricity. A man used to come to take an order for groceries once a fortnight. I lived off five pounds a month. You got such tiny bits of butter and meat that if your tooth had a hollow in it you would have lost them! My uncle had a woman working for him who was a London evacuee. We had a lot of rabbits in the dairy so we offered her one, checking that she knew what to do with it. She said she did, but she came back the next day and said she didn鈥檛 enjoy it much because it had taken her so long to pluck it!

People helped each other a lot and when we had the dreadful snow the farmer鈥檚 son came down with the tractor and said he鈥檇 go down to the shops for us to see what he could get. The snow was so thick in 1944 you couldn鈥檛 see the hedges.

Reg came home at Christmas with a goose and it was so large that I couldn鈥檛 cook it on my little stove so I went to the farm to cook it. Reg had also brought some Schnapps back which we offered to my uncle. He had one and really liked it so we gave him another. Next morning he came round and said 鈥淒on鈥檛 you ever do that to me again. I had to go home and go to bed and couldn鈥檛 do any more鈥�.

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