大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sue Manning-Jones on behalf of Daphne Haddock and has been added to the site with his permission. Mrs Haddock fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

During the run up to the war my headmistress had instilled in us that we should keep ourselves calm and not panic and that if we felt panicky we should pick up a book and read it. I remember waiting for Neville Chamberlain鈥檚 address after he had been to see Hitler. I remember the announcement coming over the radio and I picked up Alice in Wonderland wanting to appear calm 鈥� the only thing was I had the book upside down! I have to say that when I actually read the book some years later I formed the opinion that it hardly mattered which way up you read it.

We used to have to go into the shelters at school. My headmistress wanted to try and gauge what would happen during an air raid if someone started to panic. I was always something of an exhibitionist so she asked me if I would stage a screaming fit to make the children panic. I thought ooh this is my big day. I started screaming 鈥淲e鈥檙e all going to die!鈥� and no-one took a blind bit of notice. One of the prefects told me to keep quiet and not be so silly.

Dressing bombed out windows for Harvey Nicholls
After I left art school I went to work in Harvey Nicholls in Knightsbridge as a window dresser.I had only been there a week when all the windows had been blown out. After that they boarded up the windows leaving a small square in the middle through which people could peer to see the window display.

Working at the American HQ in London
A friend of mine had gone to work for the Americans in Oxford Street and she suggested that I try for a job there, otherwise I would get called up. I wasn鈥檛 very keen on that as I dreaded the thought of wearing woolly stockings and woolly knickers. I went and trained at Clerkenwell as a telephone operator and then went to work for the American Army Signals Section of the European Theater Operations of United States Army (ETOUSA) which later became SHAPE. I loved the job but not the working conditions which were dreadful. We worked under ground under Selfridges and if we were on night duty we had to sleep in bunks in the tunnels where there were rats. We didn鈥檛 get much sleep but it was preferable to trying to get home in the small hours if there were bombs going off. The place itself was bombed and the soldier who was on guard was killed. We didn鈥檛 know what to do when we arrived in the morning because we couldn鈥檛 get in were simply told we would be contacted.

During this period I became engaged to an American. Everyone was against it in my family as going to America in those days was utterly different from today. I had my passage booked and everything. My mother, sister and grandmother stopped speaking to me because I was leaving the country.

After leaving ETOUSA I went to work locally at the Electricity offices because I thought I would make more money without travelling costs to worry about, and I was still saving up to follow my fianc茅 to America. I was keeping in touch with him and also used to correspond with his sister. What finished me really was when his sister died in childbirth and my mother said 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what you can expect if you go to America鈥� which was ridiculous really but I was very young at the time, not quite 21 and I began to have second thoughts.

Whilst working for the Electricity Board I met the man who was to be my husband. We were married within two months. He was a wonderful man and we were together for over fifty years until he died four years ago.

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