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When I was about 19 I went with my friend up to London and stayed with my aunt in Richmond for a week or 2, my dad couldn’t understand it because most people were trying to get out of London not go in!

I was called up when I was about 18 and I worked for ICI laboratories testing petrol in Billingham. We did get bombed up at Teesside. When the sirens went off had an excuse because we would go home late and tell our parents that we had been in the air raid shelter the whole time, but sometimes we would just have an extra kiss and cuddle with our boy friends.

I lived in Sopley and always had to work because we didn’t have to money to keep us all. I would do house work in other peoples houses.
I was born in Southampton but came to Wimborne almost straight away. My parents had a butcher’s shop in Wimborne and when I grew up I worked there too. I made sausages and some of the shapes of the sausages were funny and we had a good laugh in the shop. The name of the shop was Eastman’s and it was very well known and is know today.
I’m from Bournemouth in the Old Christchurch Road and went to Lansdowne Council School and then went to college at 15 to learn shorthand typing. After that I went up to London and worked at the coal board, there used to be a 4 storey building with 1000 staff over looking over Buck Palace. It was a beautiful building, but I don’t think it’s there now.

In the first part of the war I was in Kingswood in Epsom near the race coarse and then I went down to my mother’s in Bournemouth and then went back again, but we were in the line of fire and had a 1000lb bomb dropped in the bottom of our garden but luckily for us it didn’t go off, I was about 23-25 then, I’m 92 now. Eventually they had to let the bomb off I had a daughter who was 6 so I wasn’t called up; there was no one to look after my daughter because the Japanese in the war killed her father. I worked in a laundry for a while because I thought it would be my chance to help the war as I couldn’t leave my daughter my I could go to work. The laundry was in Epsom so if the sirens went off we would have to go down into the cellar, and we would chat and sing to keep our spirits up.

It was difficult bringing up a child by myself in the war, because at night the planes would come over so I never got any sleep. My friend was actually killed, they hit her house and I used to be a voluntary nurse to help keep the boys going. We were nursing at the first aid posts in Tadworth, which is a small village that we hoped the Germans wouldn’t find, and they didn’t which was good as it was a children’s hospital as well.

I remember in the war we would play the piano but we never had lessons, my brother was brilliant, we would listen to the radio and then play what he heard. And we all liked dancing then and we would go to dance halls and we would always be able to get a partner. Some bands would come to play at Hartlepool where I lived.

My sister was in the Land Army, all my family did something, but I was too young to go into the services. Rationing didn’t affect us too much because we could grow everything we needed to eat. I would go swimming in the river. We’d go to a dance hall nearly every night. We’d play silly games too, knocking on people’s doors and running away, we never go caught! When we were at school we’d play netball, hop scotch, and we’re go scrumping for apples.

We had some refugees from the other side of the water and they would work on the farm with us and become part of the family. We’d all milk the cows, get the eggs and work the land really hard.

We’d see the planes coming over and the drone of the planes was awful and mum would tell us to get under the stairs or under the table.

Bombs were dropped around Corfe Mullen, Wimborne and Poole. I lived in Corfe Mullen but would go into Poole sometimes to my shopping or to the cinema in Wimborne, the Tivoli, or to the Regent in Poole. We’d go by bus or train from Corfe Mullen to all the surrounding areas.
In Bournemouth there were ‘dug outs’ where we would go if the sirens went off and sometimes when we came up the buildings would be damaged, but Bournemouth didn’t really get hit too badly.
I used to make lots of clothes for men as well as women, back then I was a tailor and worked from patterns. Most of what people wore then was hand made, fashion was rationed. Everyone would mend things rather that get new things. I’d work from patterns to make the clothes.
I’m from Wimborne St Giles and went to school there when I was young, I left went I was 16 and after that I met an old friend who was going to Salisbury to join the Army, I said I would go just for the ride, my friend went in for an hour and came out all joined up and the officer who was there asked to if I wanted to join. I told him that I didn’t and that both my brothers were already in the Army and hold him their names, he said not to worry I still want you to join, so I said ok we’ll toss for it, heads I join tails I don’t. It was heads and that’s how I joined the Army. It was Wiltshire Regiment that I joined just before the war started. With the Army I went to India, Singapore (which I enjoyed the best) and Egypt. I wanted to retire to Singapore, the people were nice and the climate was nice. I liked my time in the Army, I was in the infantry and then I was transferred to the tank corps and then finished in the Military Police. I moved to Wimborne St Giles when I was about 6 or 7 and by 1945 I was in the Wiltshire Regiment of the Army up at Devizes and was transferred to the tank corps, where a lot of my friends were, at Bovington. I was showing some people around one Sunday and was asked to say some words about the tanks and my service in the Army that went down very well.

We had special sun helmets when we were out in Indian and Egypt etc not the tin hats. I got wounded in the war my leg got hit and stayed in a ditch for 6-7 hours until I got rescued. That was in Egypt just outside Cairo. I caught Malaria very bad in Singapore and that left me very weak and still now I get effects of it.

There are lots of badges carved in the hill at Fovent, between W St G towards Salisbury, the Wiltshire Regiment Badge is there and I used to help that looking good twice a year. The Fly Beyond the Turnip (?) was the tune if our Regiment.

When I was a lad I would play football and hockey and when I was in the Army I played hockey then too.

When I came back I went to Shaftesbury area and worked in the park as the under gamekeeper for Lord Shaftesbury, there was a lot of poaching and river poaching. There were lots of pheasants in the park and they were known as the Shaftesbury’s Chicken! Lord S had a bad rep for women, and one day he was with a woman in the wood, they had gone on his horse and it was tied up to the tree, and lorry came past and back fired and frightened the horse that broke loose and ran all over the park and I had to catch it. His wife was lovely though; she used to help to look after people from the village because there were a lot of poor people in the village. Most people worked on the farmland and lived in tide cottages. My family had one called Martin Cottage, so called because of the House Martins that would nest there. My brother George and I would collect birds eggs sometimes and he fell one day and broke his back, which never recovered fully, he ended up with a lump on his back. He married my wife’s sister, but had told him before that she wasn’t for him but her married her anyway. 6 moths later he told me that he wished he’d have listened to me because she was making his life a misery. Poor George! My eldest brother David got killed in the First World War. I had 4 sisters and 5 brothers, but there were others but they died you. There were 13 all together.

We would have a concert in the village hall at Christmas time, carols. My 2 sisters, Lilly and Maude, and I were in a choir and we would sing at Christmas time.

My dad was a shepherd at Tollard Royal in the park there, so he worked for Lord S too. Most of the jobs around were on the land.

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