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Girls Training Corps

My name is Kate Cooper. I was born on the 17th July 1926 in Neston, a village on the River Dee in Cheshire.
In 1939 when World War 2 was declared, I was living with my parents,
Hannah-Lilley and Alfred Bamford, and my three sisters and brother in a house called ‘Holmwood’ in Parkgate Road

When I was about 17, around 1943, I joined the Girls Training Corps. This was a national organisation whose aim was to offer instruction to girls in the skills which they would need if and when they joined the services. So we learnt the Morse Code from an instructor who was based at a local army camp, some aircraft recognition, map reading, took army drill instruction and assisted the Air Raid wardens on their rounds. We were issued with a uniform which was best described as ‘functional’!
All of this was somehow fitted in at weekends or in the evenings after work.
The Air Training Corps was already well established for young boys and with similar aims.

When the war at last ended I was the Commandant of our local GTC group and was actually taking part in the parade and celebrations when I met my future husband, George Cooper.
He was a RAF sergeant visiting friends in the village while on leave. He was recovering from a bout of yellow fever, having just returned form West Africa where he had been serving with the Cypher Corps. He spent his final months before demobilisation based at Chicksands Priory, before returning home to Civvy Street and his family in Staffordshire. Demobbed servicemen were each given a suit, a pair of shoes and a few pounds. George bought me a beautiful scarf from this money which I still have and treasure. We married four years later, in 1949 and continued to live in Neston until 1959. We then moved with our two small sons to Essex, where George had taken a post as lecturer at what was then called the North East Essex Technical College and School of Art in Sheepen Road, Colchester.

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