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.

I can remember the exact day and time that war was declared. I was at the Methodist Church in The Square, Dunstable, when the minister announced at 11 o鈥檆lock that we should now consider ourselves at war with Germany. I don鈥檛 think that any of us quite knew what this meant. We had heard all about the First World War but things had advanced tremendously and I suppose we took it in quietly.

Soon after that the evacuation of children from London took place. My father was a billeting officer and I can remember the first evacuee we had to stay with us was a school teacher. She was followed by a headmaster and his wife also from London. They stayed with us for quite a while and became very firm friends. We had a doctor and his family (his wife, two children and the grandma) from London, whose house had been bombed. He was Russian by birth and had to escape from Russia with his family because his father was a Rabbi. The extraordinary thing about the grandma, was that she could only speak German. She was also stone deaf so she had to report to the police station every week. Now why she only spoke German I never worked out!

I was 20 at the time, living in Friars Walk in Dunstable and working at Barclays Bank in Luton. I was either on ledgers, statements or securities; all that sort of thing. After many of men working at the bank were called up, the assistant manager asked me how I felt about working on the counter. Well the Chief Cashier was horrified. He thought the world would fall in if women started serving on the counter! I was the first women to serve on the counter in that bank; that was quite a change in occupation. It was quite daunting to begin with but I enjoyed it immensely. Eventually more women joined the staff, although when I was there, there were only 5 women in a very large company. We were second class citizens! But of course everything changed during the war.

I did a certain amount of fire watching at the bank. I didn鈥檛 have to stay all night but I did stay quite late. Walking to catch my bus after this was quite something because during blackout periods, you couldn鈥檛 see your hand in front of your face! Occasionally it was worse because if there was a moon, they used to set up a smokescreen to protect Luton.

In 1942 I was sent to the Bletchley branch. Of course we knew there was something going on in Bletchley Park but it was all very hush, hush. I was there for 2 to 3 months. I didn鈥檛 enjoy that very much because I was the only woman there and the other gentlemen were a little on the elderly side. I also worked in Leighton Buzzard carrying out counter work before returning to the Luton branch.

I had an extraordinary experience in Luton before I started work on the counter. It was quite early on and I was sitting at a desk working on some ledgers when there was an almighty crash; it seemed to come from outside the bank. Everyone grabbed their ledgers and shot downstairs into the volts. Everyone disappeared without a word! About ten minutes later the gentlemen in charge of ledgers came down and in a very sarcastic voice said, 鈥渨hat are you all doing down here?鈥� Someone told him that we鈥檇 heard a bomb or something, he said 鈥測ou heard wrong, that was a lorry that crashed into Fishers butchers shop across the road!鈥�

I know that there were Americans staying in Dunstable because I can remember paying them their wages before the bank opened. They came into the back through the side door beside my counter. To our amusement they had two soldiers standing outside with loaded guns; an old lady walked passed them, stopped, looked at them and said 鈥渋s that loaded, mister?鈥� He replied 鈥渕other, you try me!鈥�

In Dunstable we ran a canteen at the Methodist Church in the Square, when we had a regiment of soldiers stationed in the town. It was tremendously popular. The Church parlour then was absolutely chock-a-block with soldiers. We opened the canteen early in the evening and were given extra rations (from the ministry, I suppose) to produce hot meals for them. I had never seen so many dried eggs in all my life; we cooked them until we looked like them! We had plenty of coffee, tea, milk, cheese and bread, so cauliflower cheese was a popular item on the menu! There was also a piano in the parlour which was put to good use on Sunday evenings after the church service. In was quite a successful time for the church. We met a lot of soldiers and in fact a member of our congregation married one of them. They were a good crowd and presented us with a bible when they left.

I used to help out in the canteen every Friday and stayed overnight in the church premises fire watching with another girl, Sylvia. There was one young man who slept in the church parlour but what use any of us would have been if there had actually been a fire bomb, I don鈥檛 know, because I could never work that stirrup pump! I don鈥檛 know how many times we were shown how but I could never quite manage it. I don鈥檛 remember feeling nervous or frightened during the war. I think it was youth to some extent, also a lack of knowledge and possibly a fatalistic attitude.

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