大象传媒

My family and I came back from France on September 1st 1939 to find one of our horses, a skittish 3 year old, caught in barbed wire. The vet had just been called up and when we rang him he told us we`d just have to cope. I did manage to treat the wound twice a day and the horse recovered well and was relatively unscarred.
I was supposed to go to Malvern College that term but the Domestic Science course I was to do was closed down so I was sent to Gloucester College of Domestic Science in January 1940. I didn`t really want to do this and certainly found some parts of the course exceeded my talents. I remember doing a deal with another student: I took her breakfast in bed at weekends and she did my course work buttonholes.
My mother was Dutch and became very agitated about what was happening on the Continent; she got her doctor to call me home to look after her. 鈥淵ou mustn`t go away again,鈥� she said. I had done my first aid course and home nursing training and had spent the requisite time working in a hospital so I was able to go and do VAD work in our local hospital in Bishop Stortford as well as keeping an eye on her.
I kept being put on night duty and, as my four year old nephew had come to live with us, I got very little sleep at home. The solution was to join the ATS.
My recruitment was very odd: I went up to Hobart House in London and sat meekly in a queue with other young women. Eventually a fierce lady stomped down the corridor, stood in front of me and barked,鈥� Do you drive?鈥� 鈥淵es,鈥� I replied. 鈥淎re you any good?鈥� 鈥淵es, I think so,鈥� I offered. 鈥淛ust the sort of person we want,鈥� said the
formidable female, 鈥淐ome with me.鈥� I was packed off with some twenty or thirty other young women to Camberley to be trained as a driver instructor. After five weeks I passed my instructor`s test. I was now a lance-corporal and my pay shot up from 14/- a week to 21/-! The worst part of the training had been having to reverse uphill on an S-bend and instructing an instructor!
I was sent to Scotland where I trained girls to drive. After about a week the sergeant said that the students must drain their radiators each night - I suppose there was no money for anti-freeze - 鈥淭here the sheets are, over there, sign your numbers,鈥� said the sergeant, waving vaguely at some pieces of paper on a wall. All but one of the radiators were drained and numbers written on the paper, but they were the girls` regimental numbers, not the numbers of the vehicles, so we had no idea which vehicles had been drained off and which one had been missed, so we had to go back and check. By this time it was snowing.
Our unit was disbanded and I did a stint of driving for Eastern Command in Harpenden. At one stage we were on an exercise; my friend and I had blankets we wrapped ourselves in at night and also took hot water out of the radiators to fill metal hot water bottles to help us to keep warm. When the sergeant found out we got a round telling-off, at which point my friend said, 鈥滿y father says that it is a poor soldier who doesn`t take care of himself.鈥� 鈥淲hat rank might your father be?鈥� asked the sergeant. 鈥淎 General. 鈥� replied my friend. That quietened the sergeant.
My next posting was at Hatfield House, driving ambulances, and then I did my War Office Selection Board, the result of which never came and never came, so I asked my company commander to find out the outcome. Apparently, as my mother was Dutch, they were carrying out extra security checks - but I had passed.
I was sent to Scotland for pre-OCTU where you did jobs you`d never done before. Although I started off in the cook house which was not new territory for me, I was soon sent to an ordnance depot where there were still some mules. Then the officers` training place was shut, we were put into a holding unit and were stripped of our rank. Lance-corporal may not have been very high up but it was all I had. The sergeant-major there had just failed her selection board so she was not very kindly disposed towards us. I remember once having to lag pipes with straw and hessian. As soon as we had finished it was all stripped off and we had to do it again. I innocently inquired as to what the problem was and got very short shrift.
From there I went to Windsor on the proper course. On one occasion I got lost in the fog and the blackout at night and had to be taken back to barracks by a policeman.
When my training was over I was sent to Northampton where I did a series of jobs looking after girls and ran a cookhouse - and met my future husband. The big cookhouse was to be made a mixed cookhouse with all the potential discipline problems I certainly learned a lot!
I was sent on a PT Instructors` course which meant that I was then supposed to take a class early in the mornings. My room mate hated PT. She was thirty four; the limit for joining the course was thirty five, so, on her thirty fifth birthday, she asked to be returned to her unit. This was not allowed - she had been under thirty five on the day of joining!
Eventually I got married, got pregnant and left the army.

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