大象传媒

The wartime work experiences of Liz Underwood (from 1942) in London

鈥淚 didn鈥檛 leave school, school left me! All the schools were bombed, there wasn鈥檛 a school there. I was thirteen at the time so that accounts for me being so ignorant! There was a Pitman鈥檚 College in Lewisham which was still standing (but which was later bombed flat) and my mother paid for me to train. I did shorthand, typing and book keeping. I was fully qualified. I did 120 words shorthand, 60 words typing.

Of course at that time, you must remember, anybody over 17陆 years old was in war work or essential work or in the services. So I started work at fourteen and a half years old. I worked in The Strand in London as a secretary (nowadays it would be called a Personal Assistant) to Mr Godden, who was a philatelist. We looked after the King鈥檚 Collection, Cadbury鈥檚, Fry鈥檚, Beresford & Hicks, Mr Chester Beatty, the big race owner, of course most people won鈥檛 know these names and millionaires, we looked after all the big stamp collections. During the time I worked for Mr Godden (for five years) we celebrated the 100 years of the Penny Black stamp and that鈥檚 when I met the King and Queen and the Princesses, Anna Neagle came dressed up as Queen Victoria! It was a lovely job because I met lots and lots of people. I used to often go to other Hotels to do letters or help visitors with whatever they needed. Of course one way of smuggling money in or out of the country was to buy stamps - nobody would notice a stamp worth 拢2,000 in your wallet!

We had an office in The Strand, upstairs, directly opposite The Strand Hotel. They were still bombing. I used to commute to London in the train, things went on. By that time we had got past the worst part of the bombing. It was six years, the war, a long time. But often the trains would be bombed. I know I was very annoyed, my mother had made me a white summer coat and some kind gentleman pushed me down and lay on top of me and made me all dirty, to save me from being injured in the bombing! It was lovely being the centre of London. Every so often they would march soldiers up and down The Strand to boost morale, of course London was full of foreign servicemen and American soldiers, life went on.

I had always wanted to be a nurse so as soon as I was seventeen I went to train as a nurse at Lewisham General Hospital. I was there for about a year (the war was over by now) and they were short of X-rays to X-ray us (the trainee nurses). When they X-rayed me, after training for six months, and discovered that I only had one lung they decided that I was much too delicate to be a nurse! I鈥檓 seventy and have five children and ten grandchildren!

So I went back to Mr Godden then, that鈥檚 why I never did war work, I wasn鈥檛 old enough. It was only because the older people weren鈥檛 there that I was lucky enough to get the job that I got, which was lovely. I got 拢2 10s. 0d. and out of that I paid my rail fare into London, paid my mother perhaps 10/- a week and there seemed to be plenty of money to for doing everything with. The cinemas were still open. My mother always said that if the air raid sirens go, you come home, which meant walking home when the bombs were falling. I remember going to see one film three times, I can鈥檛 remember now whether I actually saw the end. Things still went on, they were still dancing in London, Hammersmith Palais and the theatres were open. In those days you could put a stall outside (a theatre). In my job I was always going out in a taxi, visiting for Mr Godden, so while I was out doing his business I could perhaps buy a pair of sandals. You could go to the theatre in the morning and there would be a man there with a load of little stalls and you would buy a stall for perhaps a shilling, and you would be given a raffle ticket and he would stick the other raffle ticket on there and then by the time you went back in the evening there may be up to a hundred of these stalls out there. You would go and stand by your stall - the queue would start after all these stalls. I remember going to see Lady Windermere鈥檚 Fan and the ballet. I used to go to the Hammersmith Palais which was a long way from where I lived, it was always difficult getting home.鈥�

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