大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

When the war broke out I was working at Bagshaws, in the wages office. Shortly after that I began fire watching on Friday nights for Priory Church in Dunstable. We were set up in teams of 3 and had to turn up at the Parish Hall. We had a training session on the green outside the church and were taught how to be proficient in use of the stirrup pump. We had to sleep on camp beds; stretch canvas ones that were kept in the room at the side where the stage was. We took sleeping sheets with us, (we didn鈥檛 have sleeping bags in those days). The bed coverings were kept in a large chest in this side room that were actually the curtains to the stage, which were very heavy and extremely dusty. I am sure they gave me bad dreams because they were so heavy but we would eventually settle down. There was a piano that wasn鈥檛 in very good order in the corner of the room and some evenings Harold, the lad from the grammar school, would sometimes give a little recital before we settled down for the night.

Now the Church in order to protect it, or to make access easier, had two large ladders fixed to the side from the ground up to the first roof, the isle roof, and then another ladder from the isle roof to the top. Some nights we had to do some sort of reconnoitre and would go up the ladders onto the roof and have a look around. Sometimes we would go up the tower just to check things out. In the summer months when it got very hot and really very uncomfortable in the parish hall, we would take these stretcher beds into the church yard just over the wall and sleep out there. However, we had to try and get up early in the morning because on one occasion, I woke up to see a rather surprised person walking through church walk and seeing these three beds and three bodies laying there! I鈥檓 not sure that I know anybody that has actually slept alive in the church yard, but we felt we were doing something for the church and something for the war, and it was really quite an enjoyable social occasion.

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