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鈥淭his story was submitted to the Peoples War site by a volunteer from Adult and Community Education, Oxfordshire on behalf of Mrs Elmwood and has been add to the site with her permission. Mrs Elmwood fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.鈥�

At the beginning of the war I joined the WVS and for 2 nights I did fire watching all night and for 2 hours on the other nights I did the soup kitchens in Stepney Green and Limehouse. It was horrific the way the planes came up the Thames and dropped bombs anyhow. St Paul鈥檚 was on fire. It was terrible to see. London burned all that night and the next day. I remember the smell and the rats coming out of the sewers.

On 4th August 1941, I stupidly volunteered for the RAF. I was 21 years old. I went to Gloucester for Square bashing, (teaching you how to march). I went from a quiet sort of home life with my own room and bathroom and brought up with boys, to living in a hut with 30 girls and having to walk at least 400 yards on duck boards to go to the ablutions. Half of the girls did not wash before they went to bed or put on a nightdress. This lasted for 2 weeks.

I went to a number of different places around the south coast. The beaches were out of bounds, covered in barbed wire and sometimes mined. I trained as a radar operator at the Sennen Cove Hotel, monitoring low flying German aircraft. We did shift work at the radar stations, (all of which were underground), 6 to 2, 2 to 10, and 10 to 6. We wrote down the information on paper and sent it to the operations rooms, (where you see the girls in the films pushing things around on the big table)

I became a corporal and then a sergeant. One of the stations I worked in, near Bournemouth, was bombed and quite a number of the girls were killed.

I remember when the doodlebugs started. They were very noisy. They came over, stopped, and you counted to ten and then they blew up. That short silence was horrendous. Our group captain got us on the parade ground and said that the doodlebugs were from Germany and you were not allowed to tell anybody. They did not want Germany to know that they had got as far as London, so we were forbidden to talk about them and I think the press were forbidden to write about them.

At one time I was stationed at flight command Essex, where there were Spitfires and the group captain there was Douglas Bader. He was an arrogant man but a wonderful CO.

After the war had ended, in 1946, I was sent to Reading to be taught how to demob women coming back from places like, Egypt, Italy and prisoners of war from Japan. There was no counselling. On arrival they were issued with kits which had to go back after the 3 day demob process as they were only allowed one suit and one shirt. They had to be cleared for medical reasons; some had been wounded. Bedding had to be taken back: one pair of sheets, one pillow and two blankets.

The food was awful and wasted. Cooks could not cook. I was virtually a vegetarian for four years.

When I was billeted at Shaftsbury for a couple of weeks a sergeant there taught me how to drive. I did not do a driving test or have a licence. You did not need one. I had a bike all through the war, which cost 拢5.19sh.6d. My father gave me a lamp for it, run by crystals, and I was fined half-a- crown by a policeman on one occasion when it went out.

I met Monty. I had a great admiration for him. He never spoke down to any one.

When I lived at home the air raids frightened me. I would go into the shelter in the garden with my brother and mum and dad.

I was a quiet person when I went into service. I could stand up for myself by the time I came out.

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