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I was born in 1923. I was 16 when the war started. I lived in London. I was not evacuated. I worked in the city of London by the stock exchange.
I was in the army. I wore khaki trousers and shirt, and a beret and a tin hat. I also carried a kit bag.
You had toast of course, everyone had bread, but even that was rationed. I was in the army and ate the same meals as the soldiers.
For a while I worked in what they called the cookhouse. When they had to go on maneuvers, we used to have to put up all their sandwiches. Because we couldn’t butter the bread (we couldn’t do it quick enough) we used to melt the butter and we used to put it on the bread with a paintbrush. Then we put spam, always a piece of spam, in the middle, then another piece on the top. They used to have 4 pieces of that in one of them tins and that used to be their rations, with some what they called ‘hard tack’ (that was hard biscuits).
After I left the barracks where I first was stationed, I went to what they called a ‘convalescent depot’ where the soldiers used to come to recuperate. I met my husband there got married in 1943. I had a little boy in 1945. I came out of the Army at the end of 1944 glad it was all over, and hoping we could all settle down. But things didn’t settle down all that easy, there were great big bombsites and there weren't enough places for people to live. There still aren't enough places.

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