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When the war began I had just left school and started my first job. My father was moved to Windsor Tax Office from Central London and when we all moved together I was employed at the Guildhall Windsor dealing with Ration books.
I became friendly with a drummer in the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards who paraded in the band past the Guildhall to guard duty at Windsor Castle. T celebrate Princess Elizabeth’s 17th birthday members of the battalion were invited to a dance. My friend invited me to attend with him. While we were there I dared him to ask the Princess for a dance, which he did! The next day he was front page news on the Daily Mirror.

I joined the ATS in 1942 and was sent to work as a shorthand-typist. My first post was in General Records in Winchelsea. I can remember one time when I wanted to go home as my mother was ill. I was denied permission so I arranged with my friends that during morning parade I would simply march away from the parade to the station. It must have looked like a ‘Carry On’ film. The Red Caps came to take me away but allowed me to stay for two days with restriction of pay when I was charged with AWOL.

My next posting was to St. Paul’s Girls School Hammersmith, London, which was being used as General Montgomery’s headquarters planning for D-Day.
Although bombs and doodle-bugs were part of life in Central London, our social life sometimes entailed climbing out of windows at night to go out to an American Serviceman’s club in Piccadilly.
During the summer the whole HQ moved to Wentworth golf course for 6 weeks- said to be rehearsal for our eventual movement to Normandy.
We left Southampton for France from Wentworth on a ship crowded with Canadian troops and transferred to a landing craft as we neared the beach.
There is a photo of me landing on a Mulberry Harbour in the advanced party of the ATS in July 1944 in a book entitled ‘The WRAC ‘by Shelford Bidwell.
The book is in a series ‘Famous Regiments’ publish by Lee Cooper Ltd., 1977.

We lived for a few months in a tented camp in Courselles near Bayeux . I worked on General Wansborough Jones’ team who was in a large troop of movements. During the trip to Belgium we saw a queue of British soldiers being kept in order by a Sgt. Major. He said ‘My wife thinks I am fighting but I am guarding men into a brothel!’
In September we were moved in lorries to Brussels where we were billeted on Avenue Louise, in a block of flats which had been occupied in the previous week by the German SS. We worked in the centre of Brussels in the large SHELL building.

Immediately the war was over we were moved by train to Bad Oynhausen in Germany. The carriage on the train occupied by ATS was guarded by armed guards to protect us from the British soldiers!

It was an exciting life for us young women — experience of war on an international front. However the sight of devastation in
French towns and the smell of death stays with me forever.

I married Raymond Osborne who was an RSM who arrived to take charge of our office in Normandy.

Celia Osborne 2006

This story was submitted to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People's War site by Patricia A Waters at the Folkestone Library- 'Peter Davies Heritage Room' with Celia Osborne's full permission

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