High Explosive Bomb at Meadvale Road

This is Mr D Barkshire's story; it has been added by Herts Libraries, with permission from the author, who understands the terms and conditions of adding his story to the website.

Part One — In Prison as a Conscientious Objector

Having been a member of the Peace Pledge Union since its inception, when the war started in 1939 I registered as a conscientious objector. I was 27 years of age at the time and into my confident, rationalist period. In due course I received an appointment to attend before a tribunal to have my conscientious objection tested. These tribunals were always of a standard type with a legally qualified Chairman, either a barrister or a retired judge; a member of the working classes, generally a trade unionist; and a member of the employers’ organisation, the CBI. My tribunal application was refused.

Then, after I had refused to attend medical examinations, a very pleasant police constable appeared on my parents’ doorstep with a summons for me. “You are a very silly chap,” he said. “You might very well fail the medical examination.” I said to him, “That really isn’t the point”.

In Wealdstone Magistrates Court the clerk read out the charge — ‘that you were ordered to attend for a medical examination for army purposes… How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?’ Full of my own confidence I said “I admit the facts mentioned in the charge sheet but I feel no sense of guilt”. “Take him down for twelve months” said the magistrate, so I was taken to the cells beneath the court and in due course a police vehicle, popularly known as a Black Maria. Eventually we arrived at Wormwood Scrubs prison — actually quite a nice location because if you stood on a chair in your prison cell, as I did, you could look over the open meadowland of Wormwood Scrubs.

Now the first thing that happens as a prisoner is you are taken to see either the Governor or Deputy Governor who reads you the rules which you must obey and these include the fact that you will be prohibited from holding arms for five years after the end of your sentence. I didn’t feel this a terrible loss, I must say. After that I saw the Chaplain — always, of course, the Church of England Chaplain — in this case a very pleasant chap called Tudor Rees. He said to me ”you know many men have spent useful times in prison. John Bunyan wrote wonderfully well in Bedford Prison”. I suggested that Voltaire was the better for having the freedom of Europe in which to write. Well, we shook hands and I was taken then to the showers.

You may have had a good bath that very morning but you are still pushed into the shower. You are thrown some grey flannel underwear and clothes. A pair of grey flannel trousers and a grey flannel coat. You are not measured for it to any extent so when taken to your cell you may be quite a comic sight actually, with trousers halfway up your leg or like concertinas around the ankles. But you do have a chance during your stay in prison to improve this garb because in the wash house during the week prisoners quite frequently change their clothing with the chap in the adjoining shower to find a better fit. Some look comparatively smart, with clothes that fit their frame.

For the first six months I was in Solitary confinement. The only time I was out of the cell was when I was released in the morning to clear the po and to wash. The cell was small with a hard bed and a flock sort of mattress and a couple of blankets, a table and a chair. There was a bell in the cell to ring if you were in dire trouble. In theory a warder should call and unlock you and deal with the problem. In practice, I heard from other prisoners, this did not always work out.

On the first day some porridge was passed in to me and I could only eat perhaps a quarter of it and the rest was taken away. But by the end of the week I was eating everything that was given to me. I remember that, perhaps about 6 O’clock in the evening you were given a small cob loaf and there would be no more food for the day. Even though hungry, I always put that cob up on the shelf by the window for a little time before I started eating it, so that I wasn’t absolutely starving in the morning.

Anyway, a special workshop was set up for conscientious objectors. Their sole enterprise was the production of mailbags. Newcomers were given a big ball of black wax and a whole skein of thread. They had to run the thread through the wax to coat it. This was done for a week or two, perhaps a month, then you moved on to the sewing, stitching pieces of hessian to make the mailbags. The next pressing job was collecting up the finished bags. Finally, if you were lucky, you were given the job of handing round the cut pieces of hessian and the wax to men who did not come to the workshop but stayed working in their cells.

After six months you came ‘off stage’ and this meant that not only could you take your meals in communion in the main hall but you were allowed out for some hours in the evening where there were games available, chess and drafts and what-have-you. I was not very fond of board games but I remember how nice it was to lose a game to another prisoner because it made him happy. That suited me very well.

Either every week or month, I can’t remember now, you were allowed either a visitor or a letter but not both. I generally chose a visitor because, although I had not then joined the Quakers — the Society of Friends, I had very strong contacts with Maurice Rowntree. Before going into prison I used to visit his house every Friday. I was visited frequently by Maurice and by John Lord, another Quaker, who was a member of the Golders Green Meeting.

One good thing about prison is that there was time to think, time to read. I had taken in to prison with me, J W Dunn’s ‘Experiment with Time’ and I remember Maurice Rowntree asking me, when I came out of prison at Christmas 1942, whether I had made any progress on it. Well I had, but right then the big thing as far as I was concerned was that I was out of prison. Now it was time to do something more useful.

Part Two — The Volunteer Relief Service Unit

After my stint in prison for being a conscientious objector I went back to the Volunteer Unit in Poplar where I had previously been working at weekends. There I found that quite a few of the members were working as nursing orderlies for terminally injured ex-servicemen of the First World War at a residential nursing home in Ealing. This establishment was run by one of the nursing orders of the Roman Catholic Church, the Sisters of St Vincent. I worked there from the beginning of 1943 until after the end of the war.

There were times when one felt extremely low and extremely sad. I remember going in, the first day I was there, to feed a badly injured man. Feeding him was very difficult. I almost dropped the plate of food. After, I went straight into the kitchen and sat down, right out. But I was soon back doing everything.

Another memory I have of that is the time when I had the job of laying out, after he had died, one of the patients there who had an awfully badly damaged back. I can’t describe it. And for about seven days after it was as if I didn’t see any sunshine at all, it was so awful. But apart from that I enjoyed the work there and the company was definitely good.

As part of the relief service unit at Poplar, I took round buns and tea to the people in underground shelters and also tried to find accommodation for those who were bombed out of their homes. We all of us knew what accommodation was available, where church halls were, where the vacant property was. Our unit was based in Plimfole Street, Poplar, in the first floor and basement of a bombed out Baptist Chapel. I remember that one of the members of our team was a very good pianist and he liked Chopin sonatas particularly. By great luck there was a grand piano on the stage in the basement of that old Baptist church and there he would sit down after he had been on his rounds and be perfectly happy.

Epilogue

The First World War was a war fought on the same lines, really, that had been in use over centuries. And those men who were not willing to fight because they were conscientious objectors were regarded as criminals. Indeed, many of them were sent abroad under armed guard and on one occasion a number of them were lined up, blindfolded and stood ready expecting to be shot, though they were not, in fact, killed. (The record of that I read in a book dealing with conscientious objectors of the First World War.) During the First World War a procedure of “cat and mouse” was regularly employed: a man who did not attend for a medical was given a year’s sentence. Out he came to receive another appointment for a medical examination and in due course he was back in the same cell within a month or so. England wasted a large proportion of her mankind in the First World War.

In the Second World War a better culture prevailed and those who did not take part in military endeavours were still used in hundreds — Bevin’s boys, those who worked on the land, some in my position who voluntarily took up relief work.

I was exactly one year old when the war broke out on 3rd September 1939, for my birthday is on 2nd September. My parents and I were on holiday in Hastings, but my father insisted that we return immediately to our home in London. We lived in the top floor flat of a house in Ealing, but rumours that the Germans were about to start bombing raids on London persuaded my father to look for what he believed would be safer accommodation, and we soon moved into a rented ground floor flat in the same borough. This was the only home I knew for the next twenty years.

Of course, I cannot recall my father being called up, but by the time I was three or four I was aware that he was in the army, and that when he came home on his very rare periods of leave, I had to forsake my place in the double bed I had been sharing with my mother, and was relegated to a camp bed in the sitting room. I never understood why we could not all three have snuggled up together!

My father was in the REME (Royal Mechanical and Electrical Engineers) and was based at Aldershot. He was never involved in actual combat, but just after the war ended, he was stationed at Bielefeld in Germany, and I can still remember his shocked reaction to the conditions he found there. When he was eventually demobbed, he came home with some bars of plain chocolate in his pocket, and a dreadful blue serge 'demob' suit which he wore to work every day until the seat and elbows shone like glass. He also brought with him some exercise books in which he had meticulously recorded everything he had been taught about engine parts and tools. I have these books still, and they are an object lesson in draughtsmanship and penmanship. He had shaved off his moustache while in the army, and was most hurt when my mother did not notice until several months later.

As I was an only child, my father's absence meant that mum and I were thrown very closely together. Money was extremely tight, and mum had to take on cleaning jobs in order to make ends meet. She was also trying to look after her aged and infirm parents at the same time, so it is not surprising that she was sometimes a little fraught. At one point, things got so bad that she was forced to use the services of a pawnbroker, but had nothing of value, so resorted to taking the spare sheets and blankets to his shop in return for a few shillings, until she could redeem them on her next pay day. She always told me that we were going to the laundry, but, even at that young age, I was not fooled. I was taken to the houses where she 'did' in an old pushchair, and was always told to, "Sit still and don't touch anything," while she swept and cleaned and polished. To this day, I have a horror of seeing women on their hands and knees, and have always vowed never to ask anyone else to do my housework for me. The only thing I could do to relieve the boredom of these long hours was to take books out of the shelves and try to read them. I date my love of books and reading from that time.

It was while mum and I were coming home from one of these jobs that we had our first encounter with a doodlebug. You could always hear these dreadful things coming from a great distance, and you knew that as soon as the engine cut out, they would drop like a stone and do untold damage to whatever they fell on. Those few seconds between the final splutter of the engine and the crash as the rocket hit the ground always seemed like an eternity, and then there would be a deep sigh of relief that you had again managed to escape, followed by an immediate pang of guilt because you knew that some other poor soul had probably just been killed. In this particular day, my mother was pushing me as usual when the familiar throb was heard in the distance. Although I was so young, I knew very well that this was a noise to be frightened of. A few yards away, there was an iron gate which led into an alleyway, which seemed about the safest place to be, but this gate was very narrow and very twisty, and mum could not get the pushchair through it. In a sudden panic, she picked me up and practically threw me over the gate, leaving the pushchair to roll into the gutter. I was not hurt, but I was very scared, because she was scared, and by the time she managed to ease herself through the gate, we were both in tears. Of course, by this time the doodlebug was miles away, and we never did find out where it dropped. Once it was clear that we were safe, mum summoned up all her dignity, took me by the hand, and sauntered nonchalantly over to where the pushchair lay on its side in the road, as if this was something she did every day.

A doodlebug did actually fall in Ealing, at a later date, only about two hundred years from our flat, and I recall mum flinging herself on top of me as the thing droned over our roof, spluttered, went silent, then dropped with the most almighty crash. Our windows shook, but the house was undamaged. There was a huge hole for several years afterwards where the rocket had fallen, where cow parsley eventually grew in profusion and the local children played football. Several shops were demolished, and three people were killed.

I do not know why I was not evacuated. Perhaps I was too young, or perhaps mum simply couldn't bear to let me go. Money was scarce and rationing was rigidly applied, but I do not remember ever being hungry or cold. The points system seemed to me quite fun, and I used to enjoy counting out the different coloured little slips in the ration books - so many for a tin of condensed milk, so many for two eggs, and so on. We were registered with a butcher, as everyone had to be, who always had a notice in his window saying 'No offal today'. I did not find out what this mysterious substance was until long after the war was over, and was very disappointed. There was great excitement one day in our neighbourhood when it became known that the local greengrocer had just had a consignment of bananas delivered, the first since the outbreak of war. Mum grabbed me and we joined the queue which had already formed outside the shop. Eventually, we were allocated our ration of two bananas, and when we got home mum gave me one, watching me with an expectant smile as I bit into it. I hated it, but even then was perceptive enough to realise that she was very proud of the treat she had managed to obtain for me, so I forced it down and told her it was lovely. I have disliked bananas with a passion ever since.

We had a Morrison shelter in our living room, which was nothing but a sheet of galvanised iron placed over the dining table, and what looked like thick chicken wire hanging from it. It was like a little private prison, and we were supposed to crawl into it and sleep there every time the air raid siren sounded, but it was often too much trouble, and we just relied on good fortune to get us safely through the night. We had also been issued with gas masks, but the smell of the rubber made me feel sick, and I refused to try it on.

I think it was in late 1944 that mum was rushed into West Middlesex Hospital with acute appendicitis and underwent an emergency operation, and I had to stay with our neighbours a few doors away. While mum was in hospital, a bomb dropped nearby, and she told of the casualties who were brought into her ward, many of them with serious wounds or burns. Because of the sudden need for beds, she was discharged earlier than she should have been, and was quite weak for some time afterwards. A few months later, I was admitted to what was then the King Edward Memorial Hospital (it is now a multi-practice medical centre) for a hernia operation, and was in for ten days. I fretted all the time, worrying that my home or my mother would be blown up. The doctors told mum that I would have to return in six months' time as they had discovered I had another hernia on the other side. Sixty years later, I am still waiting for that second operation.

I started school before the war ended, and well remember how frequently our lessons were interrupted by the air raid siren and the need to decamp to the concrete shelters in the playground. To us young children, this was all rather an exciting game, and we huddled together in the darkness, lit only by a few naked bulbs, while our teachers tried their best to keep us amused with songs and stories.

Naturally, my view of the war was very simplistic, and I understood only that our country was fighting this evil enemy somewhere many miles away. To me, it was merely a question of who could kill more of the other's people, and at the age of about four, I remember asking my mother how many more Germans were left. She said mildly, "Oh, only about six, duck," and I was perfectly satisfied.

I was six when VE Day came. I came home from school to find a single Union Jack stuck outside the house, and when mum told me the war was over, all I could think was that dad would soon be coming home for good. Rationing and shortages continued, of course, for a good few years, but it was worth putting up with the deprivation simply to know that you could go to bed without the fear of being bombed out while you slept.

Then came the unexpected result of the 1945 General Election, and little Mr Attlee was suddenly Prime Minister. I did not understand the implications of the overwhelming Labour victory, but knew that my parents had voted Labour and that they were rejoicing in their own quiet way. My particular war was over, but, in many ways, it was only just beginning for many others. We knew several people who had lost husbands or brothers or sons; my own Uncle Henry had only just made it back from Dunkirk, and was affected by the experience for the rest of his life. My Aunt Jennie's husband had been a navigator during the Battle of Britain, and was never able to settle down to a normal civilian life. These men were casualties of the war as surely as if they had been shot or wounded, but the consequences of this most appalling conflict were hidden from a child of six, whose only lasting scar was an aversion to bananas.

This story was submitted to the BBC People’s War site by Wymondham Learning Centre on behalf of the author who fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in November 1926 and was almost thirteen when the war began. We lived in a small house in East Acton, near Wormwood Scrubs in London — my father and mother, myself, and my three sisters. My two older sisters, who were sixteen and almost eighteen, went to work in factories. My father, who was about forty-one, had been in the army in India and was in the Territorial Army. He was called up at the start of the war. Later an Irish girl doing war work came to live with us. I think one of my sisters might have met her in a factory. The house was always full of girls during the war.

My younger sister was only seven and was evacuated to Oxford. Because she was so young I went with her. We boarded with a young couple with a baby. The wife was a wonderful cook and the food was lovely. She made delicious lardy-cakes.

I don’t remember how long I stayed in Oxford, but I remember seeing some of the wounded from Dunkirk laid out on the lawns at the front of one of the Oxford hospitals in 1940. A sea of blue hospital uniforms. It’s a sight I’ll never forget.

My younger sister stayed in Oxford but after some time I went back to East Acton, left school and started work. My first job was as tea boy and general dogsbody in a garage where my father had worked as a mechanic. I was paid 16 shillings and four pence for a five and a half day week. I learnt to drive there.

The Germans were bombing London. An Anderson shelter was built in our garden but it leaked badly and was constantly flooded. The interior was concreted so often that in the end it was too small to be any use and we didn’t bother with it. We got used to the bombing. They say you can get used to anything, don’t they? When the doodlebugs first started coming over we’d hide under the table, but the bombs didn’t stop my older sisters from going out and having a good time. There were dances in every pub and in many factory canteens, and they’d be out nearly every night. I used to save up my clothing coupons for them in return for cigarettes or other things, like butter- I can’t stand margarine. I often went to visit a friend in Harlesden and had to walk home — buses stopped at 9 p.m. It was a long walk through an air raid, but I just kept going. We never used Underground station shelters because where we were the line ran mostly above ground, where there were none.

Shortages are what I remember. Our family hadn’t had a lot before the war, when my father was often out of work and my mother skinned rabbits and washed jam jars in factories to keep us afloat. But we didn’t need a lot — not as much as people seem to need today.

Most factories had good canteens selling good solid British food very cheaply — better than you could get at home. There was a good British restaurant on the estate at East Acton selling the same. We were pretty well off for food, really.

Eventually I got work at Dubilier, a factory making electrical transformers.
I joined the Home Guard when I was at Dubilier. We trained in the factory canteen, using rifles with no bullets. The use of the rifle was demonstrated with blanks. In fact I never saw any ammo when I was in the Home Guard. One Saturday evening we went on an exercise in Hanger Lane, some of us positioned with our empty rifles on the balconies of the flats having cups of tea with the tenants while we hung about waiting for the “Germans” to arrive.

I was also a firewatcher. We’d work on a rota, usually two of us watching from the factory roof for fires started by incendiary bombs. If we spotted a fire one of us would run down and alert the fire-fighters.

It wasn’t easy changing jobs during the war — you had to get permission from the Ministry of Labour and were only allowed to move from one type of war work to another. I managed to transfer to a better-paid job at an aircraft factory on the North Circular Road, making Mosquito bombers and parts for Halifax bombers. Lots of girls worked there.

When the bombing got bad I left and joined a building firm that worked for the “Flying Squad”. It was good money. When the doodlebugs started coming over in earnest teams of men, many Irish, would go wherever they were sent to clean up the mess and put tarpaulins up to make places watertight as fast as possible. We went all over London.

My team was called out when a London bus fell into a bomb crater when a bomb landed immediately in front of it. I don’t know whether anyone survived. Heavy machinery was needed to haul the bus out of the hole.

While I was working on the roof of a place in Kilburn, three storeys high, I slipped. I slid down the roof on my back, digging my heels into the tiles to try to stop myself. My feet hit the guttering, which gave way, and I fell off the roof. I landed on a huge pile of broken tiles that had been tossed off the roof, and they broke my fall. If they hadn’t been there I’d almost certainly have been killed. I was sent home for the day. I must have been bruised, but I had no broken bones.

In 1944, the year I turned eighteen, I was called up, so for a while my father and I were both in the army, though we only saw each other once on leave during the war. I was put into the Grenadier Guards. I was given a warrant for railway travel and sent to barracks at Caterham in Surrey, where everyone went for initial training. I remember the jazz trumpeter Humphrey Littleton, who was also in training in the Grenadiers, playing in the NAAFI. It was winter, and we were made to gallop around in the snow in our vests and shorts to toughen us up. I was already pretty tough, as I’d had a hard life. Some of the men probably suffered more than I did.

After initial training we went to Windsor, where there was more marching and running around in Windsor Park, and night training on the river. Then to Minehead in Somerset to practice landing from barges — doing the opposite of lemmings, trying to leap out of the water and up cliffs.

Then we were sent to Scotland, near Hawick in the Borders. There was a German POW camp there and one of our duties was to guard it. It wasn’t a big camp — about two hundred or so prisoners. Hawick was a small place and there wasn’t a lot to do for entertainment. There were Polish soldiers stationed nearby. There was a regular hop in the village hall, and there were lots of fights with the Poles over girls. I didn’t get involved in any myself. One of my mates had an auntie in the town and when we had leave we’d visit her, and she’d give us some homemade cake to take back to camp. The grub was good in Hawick. We had good porridge with sugar.

Sometime after VE day in 1945 we were sent abroad. We were given seventy-two hours embarkation leave in London. I stood for eight hours on the train from Carlisle to London with all my gear, and then had to travel all the way back to Scotland with it before being sent down to ship out at Southampton. I don’t know why we couldn’t have been sent to the port from London. They talk about red tape today, but there was a lot more of it then.

We went on an old, rotten French tub, the “Champollion”. The food was foul. A battalion of South Wales Borderers travelled with us and we organised boxing matches with them for entertainment. We thought we were headed for the Far East, but we ended up at Haifa in what was then Palestine. Of course we weren’t told why, but later we thought that probably the atom bomb had been dropped on Japan while we were at sea, and we had been diverted.

Although the war was officially over there was still trouble in Palestine, which was being flooded with Jewish refugees. Palestine was under British mandate and the British were attempting to limit Jewish immigration because of protests from the Arabs. At one point we were called out to back up the Red Caps in an incident with a ship full of illegal immigrants — men, women and children - that had been refused entry into Haifa. Some of the refugees jumped overboard, others refused to leave the ship. The ship was rusty and conditions on board filthy. They were all taken off. Some of them had to be dragged. They were stripped and sprayed with DDT to delouse them and taken away to detention camps.

We thought the local Jews were friendly, until two British Sergeants were taken out of a bar by members of the Stern gang and hanged in an orange grove. The gang, led by Abraham Stern, were Zionists extremists who objected to the British administration. We never had any trouble from the Arabs.

I got dysentery in Palestine. It just struck me down. I was out of the Regiment for three months, and my weight went down to seven stone. I was at a convalescence centre outside Haifa. There was a horse-changing centre nearby and I learnt to ride a horse there. Camel trains ended up there as well — it must have been a staging post, because we’d see hundreds of camels milling around on the beach overnight and they’d be gone next day.

In the winter of 1947 I was given leave. I was sent home by what was called the MEDLOC route, on a US Liberty ship via Port Said to Toulon in Vichy France, where we stayed in a transit camp for three days during which we were forbidden to have any contact with the locals because the Vichy regime had collaborated with the enemy. It must have been someone in the camp who made the postcard containing my photo in a rose-wreathed heart, which I sent to my mother. We then travelled across France by train. It was bitterly cold. I’ve never been so cold in my life. The train stopped at Lyon or Dijon, where German prisoners served us food. They were better off than we were. They had tins laid out in which they were collecting foreign coins, and were selling cigarette cases made from old mess tins — beautiful filigree work.

I eventually got a boat to Liverpool and was demobbed at the end of 1947. I was twenty-one. I was given three months demob leave and then I had to find a job.

Chapter 1 - Call-up to Northampton

On the 5th of January 1943 I was notified that I was to report for duty in the ATS. I was not surprised, as I had signed on at Southend some time before.

On the 15th of January, my brother Victors friend, Peter Savill and my mother travelled with me to Euston station to see me on the train to Northampton, where I had to report to No1 ATS training centre. We were met at Northampton by army lorries, which took us to the centre. I do not remember too much of Northampton.

It was a very cold January that year with snow on the ground for most of my three weeks training. I had chilblains on my feet and trying to break in new army shoes was very painful as there were parades, PE and marching everyday. My first breakfast was kippers, not quite what I was used to at home but when you are hungry you eat. I did go into Northampton once to look around and marched one Sunday to Church Parade but cannot remember the name of the large Church we were in. Training was mainly learning the dos and don’ts and regulations of army life and being assessed as to where I would be posted.

Chapter 2 — Posted to Greenford

I was posted in February to the RAOC (Royal Army Ordinance Corp) camp and depot at Greenford Middlesex. The camp was a short distance from the depot and we had to march to work each day. The camp itself was quite nice, we were in Nissan huts, I suppose about twenty girls to a hut. They were cold in the winter months, there being a coke stove in the middle of the hut. The depot was originally a factory owned by Heinz 57 Varieties, before the Government took it over. There were army and civilian personnel working there, the buildings were all numbered, some were offices and some warehouses. I worked in 409, which was an office. Major Bush and RSM Dumbleton were over the army personnel and Mr Melhuish supervised the civilians. We were all a friendly crowd and worked well together. Our main job was to issue stores to various places in Europe, India, Burma and Africa and to make sure that everything was available in the warehouses; it was interesting work.

Two civilians I remember were Mr Doughty and Jimmy Peach. Mr Doughty lived at Greenford with his son and daughter-in-law, he always seemed to have a supply of peppermints. I was invited to tea at his home one Sunday with a friend and we were made very welcome. After the war he visited my home at Lodge Lane and later after I was married came to visit me at my new home at Chadwell St Mary.

We had all our meals at the cookhouse in the depot; on the whole they were not at all bad. Sometimes when we were on night work and there were air raids. The air raid shelters were concrete, above ground and not very comfortable. Being near to Northolt aerodrome we were a target for the Germans. They did bomb the airfield and on one occasion dropped a land mine on one of our warehouses. It was quite frightening; there were casualties, but not anyone that I knew.

My old school friend Phyllis lived at Hanwell, not far from Greenford and my friend Ivy and I were invited to visit her home for a meal. It was lovely to see her and her parents but travelling was dangerous then, as you never knew when there would be an air raid. On one occasion we went to a dance at Ealing and there was an air raid, the military police took us back to camp.
I remember once, we had been on night work; we went back to camp to sleep and later that afternoon my friend Ivy took me to visit her home at Holloway London. Her mum made me very welcome and gave us a nice meal. We had to go back to camp early in the evening because we were working again that night.

I took Ivy home with me to meet my parents on a weekend pass. She also met my brother Vic who was home on leave; after that first meeting she came to see Vic and they later married and she became my sister-in-law.

In July 1943 I heard that my boyfriend Charlie would be speaking on BBC radio from Calcutta. Although I was working in the depot, I was given permission to walk back to camp and listen on the radio there, it was lovely to here him.

I was put forward for promotion and went before a selection committee of officers but declined the offer of a stripe. I could not imagine myself giving orders and I didn’t want the extra duties an NCO had to perform or to be moved from my friends. When we were unable to get home at weekends we would go into Harrow and on one occasion saw the film star, “Richard Green” live in, “Arms and a Man”. On another occasion, when we were coming home, Joan Creagh, Ivy and I accepted a lift to Park Royal station from some Americans in a jeep, it was a case of “hang on to your hat”, but it was a laugh and kind of them. Sometimes on the journey home there would be a raid and the train would stop at the nearest station. I remember this happening at Mansion House station and having to get out and wait; you never knew how long a journey would take. On another occasion the three of us came home on a weekend pass and decided to travel back to camp early on Monday morning instead of Sunday evening. Joan, who lived in William Street Grays, spent the Sunday night with us, so that we could get the first bus to Upminster. This we missed by a few seconds and had to run all the way to Grays station from Lodge Lane. The porter at Grays station practically threw us in the compartment and we were still out of breath when we got to Barking but we did get back to camp on time.

On January 20th 1945 Ivy and Victor were married and I had seven days leave. I missed her after she was demobbed.

Chapter 3 — move to Donnington

I had another leave in April 1945 and was then posted to Donnington Shropshire Section 92 E Company ATS Camp. Audrey Hale, who was also at Greenford, came too, along with other girls from the depot. The camp at Donnington was mainly a men’s camp and we were crowded into Nissan Huts with very little room but later we were transferred to a new housing estate. This was luxury, there were orderlies to keep the houses clean and we only had to worry about our own personal things. I worked in an office on an industrial site the army had taken over and once again there were civilians too and I made many friends. We were about eight girls to a house and we were all good friends, Irene, Audrey, Dorothy, May, Doris, Joyce, Rene and myself. Whilst posted here at Donnington I attended a Housewifery course, I enjoyed this very much; we were shown how to do everything in the home from window cleaning, polishing, washing-up, cooking; everything you would have to do in your home. We finished the course by cooking a meal. I passed and did get a certificate but cannot find it now. I did get to meet Billy Wright, who played football for Wolverhampton Wanderers; his desk was in front of mine; he later married Joy out of the Beverly Sisters. I could only get home on a long leave as my army pay was 26/- (£1.30) and it would have taken all that for my fare. So on weekends Audrey and I went to Wellington, Shrewsbury or Derby and stayed in YWCA. Audrey had two maiden aunts who lived in Birmingham and we had a weekend with them, which was very nice, on the Sunday we went to Church in the Bull Ring.

In December 1945 when Charlie came home from Burma, I borrowed Dorothy Stapleton’s engagement ring and pretended I was engaged, in order to get twenty-eight days compassionate leave.

Audrey met her husband Sam at Donnington. They were married in August 1946 and I was one of her bridesmaids.

I enjoyed my ATS days and in 2005, still write to some of my friends.

I was demobbed in July 1946 and married Charlie on the 26th October 1946.

V1 on Greenford Middx.

Date -- 1945 Feb/March
Impact point -- Building 416 at north end of present-day Derby Road, Greenford, Ealing

Having been posted to the Greenford Army Depot in May 1944 the daily dose of flying bombs had become a 'normal' feature of life. We would hear them in the distance and were accustomed to the cut-out and then the crump of the explosion. One I remember interrupted the conversation, for a moment or two, in the bar-buffet on Waterloo Station - while waiting for a weekend leave train.
As far as we were affected in Greenford, most doodlebugs petered out well before we got too concerned. The rescue services used to reckon they would drive out along Western Avenue to watch them until they cutout and then track their glide path to the final location.
But eventually our day came. Air raid drill was to cower down beneath the solid timber benches on which we worked to repair/maintain telecomm apparatus [see personal note below]. When danger was not too close this sheltering was a not bad experience as I worked in a group with four ATS women !
On the day of the hit we took cover and waited. This time it got serious. We heard the famous duff motor bike noise -- and it cut out ! The whistling noise -- and then the loudest crashing bang and pressure shock. The roof of the workshop lifted bodily and fell back on its walls -- shooting years of dust and debris throughout the place.
We seemd to get ourselves together and all stumbled out into the open air without much but scratches, choking and shock.
Outside was chaos. It was a direct hit on the adjacent building -- walls blown out and roof demolished. Casualties were limited to the unlucky four or five who worked in this store building [ we would have suffered worse as there were some 40/50 in our workplace]. We did have one fatality however and this was poor old Paddy, our workshop handyman who had been on his usual shortcut past the back of the flattened store shed with the morning tea trolley -- not good.
The overall bombsite scene was quite surreal as the store had contained a large number of recoil springs for 25-pounder guns -- each spring being some 200mm diameter and about 1.5m long. They had dispersed everywhere, probably bouncing away after the upheaving. Perhaps the springs also saved us from some of the blast effects [one large spring lost its inertia in demolishing my bicycle] .
We all left the depot to recuperate for the rest of the day. I guess I was pretty disturbed by the event as, later in the day, I remember finding myself in Holy Cross church [ strange for a non-believer ].
As for chance, luck or whatever, I often wonder how much sidewind would have been needed to change the course of the V1 so that it landed just 30 metres to the north at the end of its 100-mile-plus trajectory -- to make the writing of these comments very unlikely !

Personal note -- at the time I was a REME Apprentice Tradesman, age 17. We had been evacuated from our training school in the Berkshire countryside as it was required as a D-Day hospital. Not many people were evacuated into London I guess !
We were also shunted from schooling into virtually unpaid factory-type work -- working a repeating schedule of a seven day week followed by a five day week -- then a bonus two days off. As I recall we were back to work the day after the incident to get things back to normal operation.