大象传媒

KATHLYN PRESDEE nee GREEN
Quantock Corner, 17 Robert Street, Williton, Somerset, TA4 4PG

When war was declared, I was working as a chemist鈥檚 assistant in Gloucester. I did not think that things would change a great deal, but my fianc茅 Rowland was determined to volunteer, first to the navy who turned him down, because of his eyesight and then the RAF. He was accepted despite the failed attempts to fit him with contact lenses. He was sent on a wireless operators鈥� course. Nine months later he ended up at a strip of jungle in Sumatra with 232 Hurricane Squadron, the nearest place being Seletar.

At first I had been loathe to leave my job, but concluded that it was 鈥榓ll hands to the pump鈥� and volunteered for the WAAF. I was sent away to learn how to type, as there was no trade for a chemist鈥檚 assistant. I completed my course and was accepted as a Clerk doing general duties. I soon found this to be rather boring, but plodded on.

Then suddenly I was posted to Watnall near Nottingham and found myself working watches at a place called 鈥楾he Chapel鈥�. It turned out to be Bomber Command Operations 12 Group under Leigh Mallory. It was top security and all very exciting, especially when we sent out the first thousand bomber raid. Another time we plotted enemy aircraft over the top of us, but escaped detection, unlike 11 Group. The navy was in the rooms below us, guarded by the army with fixed bayonets. No one got past them without special order.

The billet I shared with another girl would not have passed muster in peace time. It was an old cottage with an elderly lady who needed looking after. The slide windows in the tiny bedroom were stuck open and the snow came in on our beds. A bowl of hot water was provided each morning to splash our faces with. We then trudged half a mile to camp to get breakfast and thaw out.

At the fall of Singapore, in February 1942, Rowland (who had become my husband on embarkation leave) was reported missing, believed killed. There was a chapter in a book called 鈥楬urricane Over The Jungle,鈥� by Terence Kelly, which described how he walked into a Japanese ambush and it was thought that must have died. In fact, he survived in the jungle for three weeks before he was captured and put into a prisoner of war camp at Palembang, Sumatra. He had many dreadful experiences and three and a half years later, after the war ended, he returned on 15th August 1945. War had dramatically changed us. We were almost like strangers, but we managed to pick up the threads and resume married life and go on to have two children. He died in 1987.

Something unique happened to me just towards the end of the war. I had been visiting Cambridge and popped into a coffee shop. Sitting alone, I was approached by a young man who sat down and excitedly started to talk. 鈥淵ou look as though you can keep a secret, just for a while until the top brass and Winston Churchill have been informed. I simply have to tell someone about it. We have just completed work on something that could end the war and it should cause the biggest explosion known to man and you are the first to know.鈥�

It was the atom bomb.

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