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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Janine John of the Cumbria volunteers and has been added to the site with the permission of the author who would like to remain anonymous. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Womens' training

I started in the Navy around 1940-41 and went to Liverpool first for my training. They were busy knocking the docks to pieces with their bombs and their shells. I spent a year there and then I went to Scotland, to Toulian Castle. It isn’t there now, they’ve destroyed it. It was on the banks of Loch Lomond and was a training camp for women. At first the training involved mainly square-bashing and then each of you would pick a category you wanted to go in to and they were preparing you for that category. It was an old castle and the Americans had been in it for perhaps a year or so before we moved into it. We slept in Nissen huts - tunnel shaped huts made of corrugated iron with a cement floor - in the grounds. We didn’t stay in the castle - the castle was for the officers. Sometimes it snowed so hard you got up and you couldn’t get out! The comradeship was absolutely fantastic and everybody would help everybody else. It was amazing the people you met from your own area.

We spent time visiting Helensburgh, the only floating dock, and met the young men that were training there. It was quite a good, special time but there were some terrible tragedies. When a ship sank it wasn’t one or two that lost somebody, it was a lot of people all at once. Some of them were very young to lose their husbands and partners.

I was there for a long time and then I went right down, would you believe, to Felixstowe — from one end of the country to the other. The war was nearing the end — perhaps about twelve months off — but the MTBs were down there, the Motor Torpedo Boats that went over to France, and they needed help in Felixstowe. We’d finished our training so I went there for quite some time. It was a learning process — we learnt how the other half of the country lived having always lived up here in the Lakes. As you can image, I was twenty and had been in Bowness all my life. To go into cities and towns, you met people from all stations of life and back in Liverpool you entertained a lot of the ships that came in. I enjoyed it really, but in other ways it was very bad. I know that we lost a lot of boys abroad but when a ship went down it was two or three hundred.

In Felixstowe we stayed in a huge hotel on the seafront that had been evacuated. Everyone had been evacuated, hotels, cottages or bungalows. Nobody could go on to the beaches or shores as they were all wired and you weren’t allowed there. The MTBs left from here to go over to France to do whatever they had to do, to catch the ships and that. The boys did a very, very dangerous job there. They were very brave lads and a lot of them were very young. I think about them often and where they are now. Of course, we were entertained and people were very good to us that lived there or wherever we were stationed. I don’t really know how the civilians managed. We were alright as we were quite well fed. However, if you got someone who had two ounces of butter and two ounces of cheese, it made you wonder how people coped. They came up with all sorts of recipes and my mother was very good because she lived in Bowness and she had a house full of evacuees. She had four school teachers and a family so that was hard.

The Doodlebugs

The doodlebugs started while we were in Felixstowe. Until then, the bombing had finished but these were really dreadful; I think they were one of the worst parts of the war. They were like long cannons that came over and when they stopped buzzing you knew they were going to drop. The bomb explodes from the bottom but this exploded coming down on us. There was nothing you could do when that engine stopped. You knew it was going to fall. The bombs dropped where they wanted them, on the docks or whatever factories they were aiming for. But the doodlebugs just flew and there was no-one controlling them. They just flew on their own and you didn't know where they were going until the engine stopped. They did an awful lot of damage all over London and all around the areas there. If our boys on the front of the coast didn't get them before they came over, they couldn't catch them. They used to be there bombarding them all. Terrible noises. Very, very loud. Very scary because you had to take shelter.

I think that was the most frightening experience I had because we were right on the coast. We used to shelter in the cellars and of course it was a large hotel we were all billeted in so if you were at the top you had to run all the way to the bottom. The bombs were also scary because you all had to go and huddle in a cellar and you didn't know what was going on up at the top or aything. They were bad times. Liverpool got it badly, Glasgow got it badly - they were the two places I was in.

The gunners down in Felixstowe were very good. We used to count as they popped the doodlebugs and they exploded into the sea. The others went overhead but you didn't know where they were going to go. You saw them if you dared to stay up top. We did so but not for very long because, of course, no one knew what they were at first. They must have had some very clever people making those things...

Travelling home

I met President Roosevelt, not individually, but we paraded for him and his wife in Liverpool and I saw the Queen Mother in Liverpool. When we paraded for them it was very uplifting. We felt very proud — and very clever!

It was very difficult travelling, for example if you were trying to get home on leave. You had to go on whatever trains were there and I spent many a night at Carlisle Station. The people round about were always good and friendly. I think it brought a lot of good out of people. I know it was a tragedy but it brought a lot of good — one helped the other, no matter who you were. We all helped each other. There’s hope yet… it wasn’t as bad as the First World War, but I hope nothing like that ever happens again.

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