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This story was submitted to the People's war website by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Mrs Green and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the terms and conditions
Story of Mrs Ada Green - In the Ack Ack for four years.

I was sent for and went to Pontefract for three weeks to find out what was what and from there they put you into what they thought. Well I didn't tell them I was a bakeress because they'd put me in the Cookhouse and I didn't want that so I could drive so I told them I was a driver. From there we went to Hereford and drove officers and learners, people who couldn't drive they went round with the officers, to see if the others are doing all right and from there you were sent out to where you were going to go. So I was sent to a battery and I drove a major, he was horrible, terrible man. My husband was in the RAF, well my young man then was in the RAF and he came, he was going abroad eventually, and he said shall we get married then if anything happens… but he wouldn't take it on our word he had to write to my husband's Commanding Officer to see if it was true. Him and his brother had a business in Nottingham and his brother had stayed in the business and the Major came in the Army. We were at Lowestoft when the Gunners shot down a plane, a Jerry plane and he went running up to the plane and it exploded just when he got there and perforated his eardrum. And if you were in the Army and you were in the hospital for three weeks you were what they called Y listed, you were sent somewhere else, not back to that battery., before the three weeks were up he came back to the battery. Eventually he was away for three weeks and if you have been in the firing line for so long they sent you to a rest camp. From there I asked for a posting because of the fact that he would come back eventually and he was really nasty. From there I went to another battery and it was lovely, really lovely, it was 592 Battery and from there we went all over the place, Nottingham and Lowestoft. We were there in the front line when all the RAF got killed on the Front.Then I used to have my hair up in little curls...
Because you couldn't fill it up with water. There wasn't any anti freeze so you had to fill it up with water ready for getting away if anything happened. From there we went to a firing camp at Whitby. While we were there, we were there for a fortnight, Sergeant Nelson, he was the MT sergeant said , "will you take your vehicle up to the gun park to bring the Major down"?. I said, "You don't want me to go up there to fetch him down, he's walked with the men all this time"."Yes, yes, you go". I said, "No I'm not".He said "if you don't you'll be on a charge". When I went up..... I thought that's enough, I put in for a posting and I got sent to another battery and it was nice. Whilst he was away they brought the Captain to Major and they called him Dickie Tindall -he was a Leeds man and was absolutely gorgeous. From there, because they'd brought this Major back and they didn't want to go to any other battery ,they went back to Catterick.. I came out of that battery and went to another one and I were at Leeds and then when they were disbanding Ack-Acks, they sent me to drive ambulances for York Military but the vehicles that we had, there was no windows in, no doors, just canvas and you rolled them back and the windows were just little bits like this and we had two Guys vehicles, two Bedfords and then there was tilly little cars. One of the girls, while we were at Leeds, we had a off site and a HQ site. She'd taken one of the officers to the off site. When she came back she said,"I'm in dire trouble". I said,"Why, what have you done?". She came from Bradford did this little girl.She said, Well ,you know Garforth, you know the bridge coming from the far side into there, the road sort of goes like that and the bridge and the steps go down and she'd hit the parapet at the top and down the stairs he went. Luckily he wasn't hurt all that bad, so she got away with it. But there were some lovely folks, really lovely but I hated every minute of it.If somebody said to me will you do this, I would do it willingly. But when they say, "You will do this" that gets my goat- I can't do it. I was in the army for four years and I didn't even know I had a bad heart. Since then I've had it operated on and it's as right as it will ever be now. Oh, they were terrible days The bombing in Lowestoft were shocking, really shocking. It was a naval port and they didn't want anything to do with the R.A.F.There was no cafe open to us, not as we could go in because you were on site you were on your own with the drivers, you know more or less got out, but if anybody wanted them well that was all right.. While we were in Sheffield once, they were disbanding Ack-Ack, they said," Will you go to the off site and bring a gun back-take the Guy because it was the heaviest of the trucks and bring it back. So I said" yes, right oh "I didn't know how big the gun was. So when I got there I said "Right, I'm going for a cup of tea" and I went into the cookhouse.I said," Bring the gun and put it in the truck".He said,"No, it's a bit too big, we can't do that, you'll have to take your truck to the gun park so we can hitch it up. So I went up to the gun park. When I came back he said,"we're ready now for you, you can fetch your truck and I was amazed at this gun-it was as long as this (about 4 metres). I said,"Am I to get that through Sheffield". Sheffield then had trams "Yes, you'll have a bombadier with you in your truck, you'll have one on the gun and one in the back of your truck".So I said, "Oh, that's all right, fine- till we got back to HQ site and when we got there, he said, "where's the other bombadier?". He said, "You've lost him, what happened to him?". He saw a shop that was selling cigarettes and he dropped off and we were about four miles out so he had to walk it. Little things like that , you know. I think the drivers were the best lot, because they could go and get a cup of tea anywhere in any of the cafes. But when we were at York military there was no NAAFI or anything, we had to go into the next billets.They said one day, they said," We're loaning a truck from the other battery will you go and pick it up?"So I said yes. We could cut through a snicket and we went into there. I said, "I've come for a truck for York military. He said, "You can't drive that." I said, "why?" He said,"Well go and have a look at it". So I said,"well, where is it".He said"That's it there." It was a scarlet in colour and absolutely massive, I couldn't reach the pedals. I said,"Oh, that's ridiculous"He said, "Well get up and see what you can do." I mean if I got on the pedals, I couldn't sit down and I could just see over the windscreen."Did you manage to drive it in the end? "No, I couldn't- impossible, impossible, so I had to go back. I said,"I'm sorry, I can't fetch it up for you it was too big". But they were all nice folks, the girls and the men. There were some goings off, I'm not saying there wasn't, but that was besides the point. I mean it was their lives and that was that,but my husband sailed from Gurrock in Scotland and from leaving to coming back home, he kept a diary-he won the military medal and this is right from him going to coming back.

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