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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Meg Harrison and has been added to the website on behalf of Eileen Smith, with her permission and she fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was almost 19 when the war started. I was living with my parents in Chingford in Essex. On Sunday, September 3rd I attended the 11 o’clock service in our local church. We were all aware that an announcement was to be made on the radio that morning concerning the declaration of war, and the Minister asked his son to listen to the radio in the vestry. When the news came through that we were now at war with Germany, the boy passed the message to his father, who made the announcement from the pulpit. Of course at this time we had no idea what it meant for us. As we were walking home from the church, a siren went off — the first one I had heard — so we hurried to the nearest public shelter. It was of course just a practice run.

I was due to start a new job the next day, in the Bank of England, in Threadneedle Street in London and the outbreak of the war made no difference to my plans. In fact I worked in the Bank of England until 1944 when I got married. For the first three months I worked in the Issue Office counting banknotes, and later I moved to the Cable section where coded cables travelled to banks in all parts of the world and were received from them. My job was to decode the cables and deliver the messages to the relevant people. Nearly all the staff in those offices were women.

I travelled every working day during these years to and from Chingford. I remember sometimes as I got out of the train in the morning at Liverpool Street Station smelling gas from the mains, which indicated there had been an air raid the night before. Then the thought would flash through my mind: ‘It’ll be a cold lunch today.’ In those days the Bank would normally provide its employees with a cooked meal.

Travelling home in the darker evenings was often not a pleasant experience due to the blackout, and particularly if I had to leave the office late, even as late as 10pm. I had to travel on my own and there would be only a few lights on in the station and just a single light on in the compartment. Sometimes you were aware that you were sharing the compartment with just one other person. If it was a man, you felt rather nervous. Leaving the train, I had to walk for 15 minutes in the dark and I remember being followed once. It was an eerie experience.

Because cables arrived and were sent all hours of the day and night, periodically I had to stay the night at the Bank. I had to sleep on a camp bed in the vaults. Of course we all thought we were very safe down there during the raids but one night we felt the vibrations of bomb close by and thought we had been hit. It sent us scurrying around in our pyjamas. But luckily the Bank walls had not been breached; it was a near miss.

As a volunteer I took part in 2-hour watches for enemy action by aircraft during the day from the roof of the Bank. We all thought it was a bit of a lark and a chance to get out of the office. We were given training in spotting aircraft but as we were only there in daylight hours we never saw a German plane. I was not aware of much damage to buildings round about when I was up there as the City itself was not as badly hit as other parts of London.

My social life round this time focused on the Girl Guides, the church choir and amateur dramatics. We were all girls taking part in these activities as there were not many men around.

In September 1944 I left the bank to get married. Up until then I had been living in the family home in Chingford which was at that time semi-rural and we had a very large garden where we kept chickens, pigs, rabbits and bees. The Egg Marketing Board came regularly to collect the eggs from our 300 chickens and because we kept bees we were allowed a special ration of sugar to keep the hives going. My father also grew a lot of vegetables. You can imagine we were a very popular family with our neighbours! We never had to buy any of our own vegetables and in fact the first time I had to buy carrots as a married woman, I had to ask the greengrocer ‘How do I buy carrots? By the bunch? By the pound?’

My husband was a conscientious objector and worked on a farm of 52 acres near Waltham Abbey throughout the war. We had extra rations at harvest time — to give us more energy! We had POWs billeted on us — I remember two Germans, one from South West Africa and the other a ‘ordinary’ German, both of a similar age, they were lovely lads. We also had Italian POWs who came daily by truck to work as labourers. One of the German lads married a friend who had been a Girl Guide.

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