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My Mother, now sadly deceased, wrote the following down for my daughter, who was doing a school project on the war:

War! What a host of memories that conjures up! I was in the Civil service in London when, and for many years before, war was declared. Temporary staff were called in, and rumours rife!

Then some of us were sent to an office in London to sign a pledge for silence, and were transferred to the Censorship Department. This was in a prison (cleared of prisoners, who were sent elsewhere) which was painted, and 6taken over by MI5 etc. We sorted copies of thousands of cables from all over the world, and heard snippets of news not published, which horrified and shocked us. One was a letter where a Sunday School teacher was asked to identify a child’s thumb after a bombing raid.

After a while, we were removed to a large ‘bombproofed’(?) building in the centre of London when the bombing became too bad.

One morning, as I waited for my bus in NW London, an air raid was raging overhead. The bus was delayed — so I caught a different train, arriving from the underground very late for work, only to find that a bus had been bombed just outside the station and chaos reigned!

During the morning rumours went round that a small unexploded bomb was in the basement. Of course, yours truly and two or three other girls had to go and see it. There it was, its tail end and fins sticking out of the floorboards. Then — we were literally hauled upstairs in no gentle fashion by male workers and scolded thoroughly.

We used to eat a carrot during the morning at work, instead of a bar of chocolate.

During raids at work, we grabbed our coats and went to sleep in the cellar.

One day a number was missing from the cable I was sorting. This cable was being frantically sought after, as it concerned two spies. I found the torn-off flimsy piece that was missing, and matched it up. My boss phoned, uniformed men praised me and excitement was there. When I asked a major what it was all about, he said it would help to catch two spies who were going to help attack a convoy of American soldiers coming to our aid. On asking (when they were caught in France getting off a boat) what would happen to them, I was told they would be shot. I ran into the yard crying bitterly. I was the instrument of their being caught, and I was a Christian woman. The major found me there and comforted me, giving me his clean hanky, explaining it was either them or the soldiers — hundreds of them, and after all, this was WAR, but I still feel guilty at times when I think of it.

One evening, my sister came to my flat to sleep, as we both had a premonition. I put my budgie cage in a corner with cushions on it, and we lay on our beds with our dressing gowns on — then it started! Flares and guns, flames after the explosions, and we had two landmines fall — one near my sister’s flat, and one on the girls’ school opposite my flat, which was at the top of the house.

I came to kneeling at the foot of the bed, with the window frame around my neck — cuts, and bruised and cut head and hands. Then a second bang, which destroyed my sister’s flat, and I heard her scream. I could see a flame red sky through the slates of the roof.

On trying to get her downstairs clutching the cushions from the bird cage, I glanced down into a gaping hole, just as Vi’s foot was over it. Then my cousins walked in through the door. Vi was in hospital and I went to a Centre and was bandaged up — head and hands.

I gave up work to move to Norfolk to be near my husband, and trained in Norwich on the teleprinters for the GPO. They were huge machines with tapes coming down from the side from London. While practising, we would flirt with any operators of the opposite sex, typing ‘spr’ (supervisor) when one approached, and resumed the typing. It was fun, and we had forgotten the Super could read the tape coming from London. It was all practice, though.

When my son, John, was toddling, my husband came home on leave with a huge rocking horse he had made; and another time a lovely train made out of a large tin can for the boiler, and odds and ends of wood etc. Even wheels carved by him.

We were hungry and starved of a good cup of tea, and for years after it was all over, I was mean with the sugar and tea etc, even when it was plentiful.

Let us pray we are left in peace. War is horrible.

Mary Elizabeth Patrina Gove (1914 — 1999)

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