´óÏó´«Ã½

At the beginning of the War, I was 12, and at Secondary School. At school we spent most of our lives in shelters in the playgrounds. When things got really bad, eventually, we had school hours from 11o’clock till 2o’clock.

I was training for the theatre. I was a singer and when I left school my stage teacher told me I had to get some proper experience in front of an audience. It was a very famous stage school in Chiswick; Carona Academy.

My first week away was to Skegness with a show that I joined to sing in, and I thought; ‘How lovely by the sea.’ It was full of blue uniforms it was a RAF camp, and we sang and danced to all these soldiers. And that is where I met my beloved Airman.

I was in Dover on tour with show and we did a week in Dover. The place was full of Canadians and New Zealanders and it was chock-a-block with all these soldiers. We did a couple of shows and then one morning we woke up and there was no one around, there wasn’t a soldier around! And we didn’t hear anybody leave, how they did it I don’t know, but they certainly know how to get rid of all those soldiers. Of course later we realised that D-day had arrived. It was incredible and I shall never forget how the place was chock-a-block at night and early in the morning there was nobody and we never heard anybody go!

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.