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"Beaumanor Hall and Steps Along the Way"

I wonder where you all are now, and wherever you are, I hope life has treated you well. Betty Haines I know progressed in with me to Trowbridge. S.O.T.B. R/Signals. Then we went on to Douglas, Isle Of Man; finally on Ops. at Beaumanor, Leics. Whilst we were at Guildford, do you remember Leslie Howard, directing a film about the ATS? He rode around the parade ground on a ladies bicycle, while we all marched up and down until the light, the weather, the cameras etc were ok. That was when the three female 鈥渟tars鈥� stepped into the front row and the `cameras rolled鈥�. I know the main star was Lilli Palmer but the name of the film and the other 2 stars names escape me now. W/218630 Irene Goldsmith, Pte. Guildford Training Centre.

37 squad, S.O.T.B. ROYAL CORPS OF SIGNALS. TROWBRIDGE.
This was where we finally found out that we were going to learn all about morse code, electricity and magnetism and a whole lot of other things we might need to know in the future. I have no photographic memories of Trowbridge, unfortunately.

From Trowbridge, we were moved to Douglas I.O.M. We had a terrible crossing, in fact everyone, including the ships crew were seasick. however, we were billeted in hotels on the seafront, and we found out that food was not rationed, and the pubs were open all day. After further training we finally were posted back to the mainland, some to Harrogate, and I was sent to B watch at Beaumanor Hall. I spent the first 2 nights on an iron bunk bed in the garage at Garats Hey. After that we were sent to a small camp of Nissan huts at Newtown Linford, near Bradgate park gates. And finally we went to a newly built camp at Woodhouse Eaves, where we stayed for the duration. We were doing important intercept work, which was passed to Bletchley Park for decoding. During our time there, I remember one American Independence Day party, when we danced to Glenn Miller at the Assembly Hall in Leicester. We met loads of RAF personnel at the regular Saturday dances at the Loughborough town hall. When we had our first reunion in October 1995,a plaque was unveiled commemorating our work and we were told that the work we had done had helped to shorten the war by between l and 2 years. I am very proud to have been part of the W.O.Y.G. and my best memory is of being one of the B Watch operators, who took down the Surrender message in plain language, from Admiral Doenitz. And for a few hours, we knew the war was over before the rest of England knew.

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