´óÏó´«Ã½

(This is my mother's story, as written by her in 1987. Her maiden name was Eva Hoe. She is still alive and remembers this period of her life very well. The sergeant/pianist mentioned became her husband, and my Dad. You can read his story under the title 'An Easy War in the Royal Artillery')

I was called up into the ATS in 1940. What a shock that was. I had no choice but to report for a medical and then go on to Pontefract for basic training. My only consolation was that thousands of other girls from all walks of life would be joining me. We eventually left Hull on a troop train bound for Pontefract to be met at the station and taken to a camp. We had medicals, injections, tests of general knowledge, lectures, and were kitted out in uniforms and given all the dos and don’ts of army life. Lights out was at 10.00pm and reveille at 6.00am.

How I hated those first four weeks. The drills and marches and the khaki underwear were awful. The only good thing about army life during those first few weeks was the food because we had more than enough and, after suffering rationing at home, the feeling was wonderful. When the four weeks were up, we were allowed a weekend home before moving on to our new billets.

From tests done at my call-up, it was shown that I was the right material for working on a gun site. I was horrified at this because when I was in civvy street the girls on gun sites were looked down on and considered common. However, with compulsory call-up we had a good cross-section of girls. I was to be trained as a height finder/plotter and for this purpose I was posted to Arborfield near Reading where I was part of a new, mixed battery.

We spent every day doing calculations in the classroom, practicing decimals and fractions again, and learning how to take readings on the stars. I remember thinking to myself at the time ‘Oh my God, I’m never going to be able to do what they’re going to set me to do’. To my surprise, I passed all the tests and in the end could cope with whatever came my way.

After training at Arborfield we then went to Whitby to do more training. All I remember about Whitby is having to climb hundreds of steps each morning. I believe we stayed in a hotel not far from the seafront.

Our next camp was in Bude in Cornwall and here I remember very well going on to a windswept cliff top to practice firing. An aeroplane was sent up dragging a sleeve behind it which we were supposed to hit. The pilot, alarmed at our inaccuracy, sent a message down to say he was ‘pulling the bloody sleeve, not pushing it!’ While at Bude I got friendly with a young girl who seemed very much out of place. I found out that her father was a Brigadier and that she had been in the FANY (a nursing organisation) before volunteering for the ATS. She was the sweetest girl and I became her friend for life after I looked after her one evening when she was ill. Later, when we were posted to Datchet, I slept in the bunk beneath hers and she would confide in me when some of the rough girls got out of hand.

We were sent to Datchet in Berkshire to join 591 Heavy Ack-Ack Battery. Soon after moving there, we all settled down and found our own friends. I had a good look round before deciding who I wanted to be friends with. In fact, I kept to myself at first because I was horrified by the swear words some of the girls from London used. Now I hear them quite frequently on the television, but to a Northern girl in those days, they were shocking.

We had only been at Datchet a few weeks when I heard girls falling out about some new men who had been posted to our camp. I was very surprised because this was the first I had heard of them. However, a few nights later I was in the canteen and saw the newcomers for myself. I think there was a sergeant, a bombadier and a lance corporal, all in their early twenties. Of course the girls went mad over them because all the men in our battery were middle aged and not A1, otherwise they would have been on more active duty. Each night I went into the canteen, the new men would be there chatting up the girls. Eventually the sergeant started sitting by me. He also played the piano which made him very popular with everybody. That Christmas we put on a little fashion show with all our army gear, and he played the piano for us. I was the bride, and draped in a sheet. I had been busy getting all the other girls into their gear and, when it came to my turn, there was no-one to help. I stepped out on to the stage and promptly fell down a hole. Apparently, when I came back along the catwalk, the sheet was draped nicely at the front, but was so high up at the back, I was showing my knickers.

We all loved every minute of being at Datchet because the locals were so kind to us. The camp was manned by guards 24 hours a day, and the daylight duty was done by us girls. The men carried guns and the girls had sticks. We would stand at the main gate and the local youngsters would come and talk to us. We would be given bunches of flowers and bags of apples. Not content with this, some of the girls would raid the front gardens when they came in late at night. Many times I woke in the morning to find jam jars crammed with lovely flowers they had taken. Even so, we made lasting friendships with the local people.

The site at Datchet was not fixed up for girls so we had to put up with quite a few inconveniences when we first arrived. The main one was having to share ablutions with the men. Also, an incinerator had to be quickly installed for burning sanitary towels. It was a remarkable sight to see a gunner trundling around with a wheelbarrow full of sanitary towels!

Each morning we were wakened at 6.30am with loud cries from the NCO and we had to be out of bed like a shot. It was a race to get into the ablutions and bag a sink, and then back into the barrack room to get dressed in the appropriate clothes. We had khaki all-in-one suits for fatigues, which was all the general work around the camp — cook-house duty, working in the officers’ mess, and so on. Fatigue duties were carried out when we were not on stand-by on the gun site. We all did 24 hours on the gun site, followed by 24 hours on fatigues. We were not allowed out of camp when we were on stand-by. Being on duty meant that, after breakfast, we all had to be on parade for inspection by the duty officer. After that we were marched up to the gun site and on to the command post.

The height finders/plotters had certain readings to take and certain drills to follow each time we went on duty. Some days we would have mock runs just to keep us on our toes. We had to be capable of doing each others’ jobs. To my horror, I was once given the job of tracking the enemy plane while doing a dummy run in the presence of a visiting Brigadier. He said he had never seen a plane behave like that before! I know that it was probably my fault because I wasn’t used to doing that particular job, but he didn’t make a fuss about it.

Looking back, my ATS days were the happiest of my life. Although we were living in a man’s world, we were still treated like ladies. Everywhere we went we were treated with kindness. On our day off, we would start to walk into Windsor but would inevitably be offered a lift before we got very far down the road, usually in a farm cart or broken-down car, but we didn’t care if it saved us a few coppers’ bus fare.

We hadn’t been stationed at Datchet very long when a few of the London girls started to get homesick and went absent without leave. This meant that the girls left in camp couldn’t go out because they had to cover for the absentees. We were all fed up about this, especially when two of the guilty went past on the bus and waved to the unfortunates stuck in camp.

We decided to teach them a lesson and asked all the NCOs and officers to stay out of sight. When the culprits returned we told them that they had to report to the office and appear before a certain officer. At the stated time, they left the barracks in their best uniforms with their shoes and buttons gleaming. We rushed out, grabbed them, and threw them into a water tank. In the struggle, the fattest girl in camp fell in with them, the culprits went under, and everyone else got splashed. It caused a lot of amusement in camp, and no girl went AWOL after that.

We all loved Datchet and Windsor dearly. Even now I can recall the feeling of awe I felt as I stood in Windsor and saw the castle for the first time. Having come from an area where the skyline was made up of factory chimneys and street upon street of terraced houses, it was pure magic to be standing in front of a beautiful, fairy tale castle.

I remember going into a café for afternoon tea, which was served by waitresses in a hushed atmosphere. Even though our army pay was only about ten shillings a week, we still managed to go to the cinema and have tea out once a week. When pay day came we would rush straight into the NAAFI canteen and buy cigarettes, shampoo and other beauty products. Any money we had left we spent on going out. From time to time, we would be entertained in camp with various ENSA shows, but mostly we made our own fun.

The time came when we had to move on and we all cried because we loved the place so much. What a sad column we looked as we marched out of the camp to the station. Our next camp was at Cobham, near Esher. This was large and spread out, and somehow the feeling of being one big happy family disappeared.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.