大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Lynn Hughes on behalf of Betty Cooney (Boon), the author and has been added to the site his/her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I remember when the South yard of Devonport Dockyard was bombed so disastrously. I was safely at home during the raid, and the next day as I reached my office I was horrified to hear of all the damage and destruction. Details of the raids on the Dockyard were never disclosed to the public for security reasons. My friend Kath and I had taken the same exam; we were the only two girls in the Expense Accounts Office who lived at Plymstock. We used to travel together on the little train that ran between Oreston and Friary station in Plymouth. There we would transfer to the southern railway London train and get off near the technical school in Devonport and then foot it in haste to the Dockyard. We had become firm friends, after a while we had the buses. Our office was split into sections for precaution any reason during the year of Crisis and each section was housed in various sites in the yard. Kath was left with the section that stayed in South Yard, I was sent to North Yard. We had asked that we could have gone to the same section so that we could travel together after overtime and a probable blackout, but our request was refused.

On the day of the bombing my friend had worn her 鈥渂est clothes鈥� to work as she had been invited out that evening. These included a lovely gentian blue bunny wool bolero that she had knitted and which was much admired. When she finished work that day she had forgotten her bolero and left it in the cloakroom. It was destroyed with the office, records and so much of South Yard. Somehow I can remember her face as she told me sadly of the loss of her bolero and her beautifully polished hard wood pencil box, more clearly than I can the details of that vast and terrible destruction. The total blitz of Plymouth and area has already been told and recorded in detail. I can add nothing to the horrors and tragedies that occurred. There was so much of it fires, death, homes and businesses lying in ruins and the choking smells of dust and fires.

The loss that concerned us most immediately was the loss of the records of the men who 鈥渃locked鈥� in the bombed South Yard. These records showed a complete history of each man, from the day he started working in the yard to the day he left. Each date and change of grade and pay etc. as well as personal details.

This information was used to calculate a man鈥檚 pension or invalidity pay when he left. Fortunately the men had been instructed to carry their clocking cards at all times ant to take them home by night. These clock cards showed the man鈥檚 rate of pay and insurance details, without them there would have been utter confusion in calculating their weekly wages, as it was they received their payments as usual. It was one of our tasks to extract all the information stored on these record cards when a man retired or was transferred to another yard or was invalidated etc., and a tedious job it used to be.

After the raid we would often have to complete the forms for the men whose records had been destroyed. We could only write 鈥淩ecords Prior --- destroyed by enemy action鈥�. This saved a great deal of work and time, I used to have a quietly feeling of relief when this happened, and I used to have a quietly feeling of relief when this happened, and I used to breathe a sigh of apology to the little blue bolero and feel that it鈥檚 destruction had not been absolutely and entirely in vain.

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