大象传媒

I joined the WRNS in 1941 when I was 18. In 1945 I was a WRNS Drafting Officer stationed at Portsmouth. My job was to move WRNS around the country to release naval personnel to go to sea. I lived in WRNS quarters, hotels in peace time, on Southsea front.

In 1944, prior to D-Day, we were not allowed to travel further than 15miles away, due to high security. For weeks before D-Day the sea front, the beaches and many roads, were packed with tank landing craft, transport and various boats, equipment etc. Every day we expected the lot to disappear across the Channel. We also expected to be bombed! On the night of 5th-6th June we went to bed as usual. We had been looking forward to seeing this great armada leave, but unfortunately I slept heavily, and found, to my great disappointment, that the lot had gone in the night! I couldn鈥檛 believe it.

On May 7th, the news of the cessation of hostilities in Europe was released late in the day, so many of us were in our night attire if not in bed. However, nobody could sleep, so we put on a coat and, with hundreds of others, ran down to the beach and lit an enormous bonfire for, of course, nothing like this had been allowed for six years. We danced and we sang with total strangers until the sun came up. It was a fantastic experience. Then we still had to go to work!

VJ Day was a much lower key occasion. But for me and my family it meant that hopefully my father would return to the UK. I had not seen him for seven years. He was a civilian prisoner of war in Shanghai and had been captive since Pearl Harbour. He had also been tortured badly, so we didn鈥檛 know if he was even alive. Our family lost everything, and we have never been compensated by the Japanese.

My father did return, aged 58 but looking 80, and after several operations and good food, soon recovered. He lived until he was 88. My mother left Shanghai in 1940 on the last ship to leave with only women and children, and lived until she was 89, spending her last years in Hull near to us.

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