´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Suzanne Longstone and has been added to the website on behalf of Yvonne Bowden with her permission and she fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

In September 1939 Yvonne was 17 years old and training to be a dressmaker in Highgate, London. Her father had predicted the start of the war some nine months before, against the general opinion in the country, and had the foresight to see that life in London in a war situation would not be pleasant. He bought a small-holding with two fields in South Lichfield, Hampshire. This was a tiny hamlet near Overton and between Andover and Basingstoke. Their house had no mod. cons. — no mains water, electricity, gas or sewage. Yvonne’s mother rose to the situation and coped marvellously with all this, cooking on an oil-fired range and lighting oil lamps every day. They grew all their own produce, so rationing was not the terrible restriction it was in towns and cities. However, there were no jobs for a dressmaker in the middle of the country, so Yvonne had to take a job as cleaner at a local boy’s prep school.

Through her job she got to know some of the teachers and got dressmaking work doing alterations for them. The teachers also knew staff working for the Bank of England who had been evacuated out of London, and the two groups got together to put on a show. Yvonne was asked to help make the costumes and curtains, and through this was offered a full-time job making clothes for the Bank of England staff which she really enjoyed.

Yvonne was called up in 1942 when she was twenty one, was assigned to the WAAFs and posted to Wing, Leighton Buzzard at the Operational Training Unit (OTU). The choice of jobs offered to WAAFs was to be a cook, driver or batwoman, so Yvonne chose to be a batwoman. She was one of three girls billeted in a hut with twelve trainee pilots to look after between them. The girls were together in one room, and the men used the rest of the hut. Exercise wasn’t a problem as she had to walk half a mile from the camp to the dining room and another half a mile back again - three times a day! She had to wait for a bicycle to be allocated to her but it was stolen three days after. The bicycle was later found outside another hut, but the first thing Yvonne did was to go straight out and buy a security chain! Sleeping on the top bunk meant that Yvonne wasn’t too concerned that a mouse had been seen in their room, until one night after lights out when she heard it climbing up the side of the bed into her bunk! She jumped out and killed it with a poker but it gave her a real fright!

Yvonne spent three months in Wing and was then sent to Weston-Super-Mare to be trained as an Equipment Assistant. After getting her head around 50 forms she became a WCI and was posted to the Maintenance Headquarters at Amport, Hampshire — just twelve miles from home — where she stayed for the rest of the war. The HQ was a country house with the top officers working in what had been the stables. Yvonne remembers a happy time there with wonderful cooks, marvellous food and lots of British and American airmen to meet and go to dances with. The ghost of that mouse must have followed her from Wing though — one night Yvonne got into bed to find a mouse snuggled up in her bedclothes! She reckons that her screams woke the whole camp!

Her invaluable dressmaking skills were put to use again after a WAAF officer asked Yvonne to make her a blouse. The result was so good that Yvonne was sent on another course, promoted to Acting Sergeant and put in charge of a sewing room. Each WAAF was allowed 4 yards of material to make clothes with, and Yvonne was there to help and supervise.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.