The Wartime Memories Project - Women in World War Two

At the time of the Munich crisis in 1938, I volunteered for the River Emergency Service. Very few people had ever heard of us, then or later. It was administered by the Port of London Authority, and came into being because the Authorities considered that, if War came, London might be so severely blitzed that it would not be possible to evacuate casualties by rail or road. So they had the bright idea of using the Thames pleasure steamers to get people out by water. Fortunately, this never proved necessary and the boats were only used as floating ambulances or first aid stations.

The steamers were converted into ambulance ships by removing all the seating and installing posts and supports on the lower deck to hold the stretchers in double-decker fashion. Thus the non-walking wounded could be brought on board on stretchers which were then simply put into place. The upper deck was devoted to life rafts and the stretcher store.

Each of the two teams consisted of : A trained nurse - known as Sister; four of us untrained girls, known as V.A.D.s (Members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment); two stretcher bearers; and a doctor in overall charge who could be called upon by either team. Of course, there was a crew to run the boat, and in charge of all movement, there was an Ambulance Officer - an R.N.V.R. Officer. I'm not sure, but I think that the stretcher bearers were Conscientious Objectors.

In the event, our craft, the Cliveden, became two first aid stations at night : one where we were billeted and one on the boat. So when the sirens went each evening, half of us went down to Cherry Garden Pier, where the boat was moored overnight, and the other half stayed in the Council Flats where we were billeted.

One night, when the sirens had sounded and I was walking down to the pier. I removed my tin hat because it was uncomfortable on the combs which I used to wear to keep my hair from my face. The inevitable happened and a comb fell to the ground. I got down on all fours to search for it - they were like gold-dust because in normal times they were imported ! So I was not going to risk losing one. I couldn't find it in the pitch dark, but help came in the form of a policeman, who, when he heard of my dilemma, joined me on the ground, and we padded about together. The rather stern sister came upon us and was furious ! But we found the comb !

We occupied two Council flats in Bermondsey. I don't remember there being much furniture. We certainly didn't have beds and we all slept on inflatable mattresses called 'lilos' arranged in rows in the ground floor flat. Sometimes you would hear a hissing sound in the night and you knew that someone's bed was deflating and that they were in for a pretty uncomfortable time because the 'lilos' were right on the hard bare floor. With a girl called Gwen, it was my job to repair the 'lilos'. We had to immerse them in water to find were the holes were and then make the repairs with a bicycle puncture kit.

Our daytime station was at Billingsgate, then the location of London's big fish market. We were the subject of great curiosity to the men working there and they were always inviting us to this and that. One of these invitations was to visit the huge refrigerators, which I did. They were really very very large rooms. I had never seen anything like them - and still haven't.

Moored next to us at Billingsgate, was the Massey Ferguson Fire Float, manned by the Auxiliary Fire Service. They thought that it was great to have a boat-load of girls next door and always seemed to be popping over for something. One of them was called Stanley and I went out a lot with him. We were both very keen ballroom dancers and he used to take me to the Thés Dansants at the Piccadilly Hotel. We had a lot of fun and got on famously. So well, that when he asked me if I'd like to bring my toothbrush to our next date, and I said 'No', this did not make a bit of difference and we carried on as if no proposition had been made - and refused ! His father had a men's tailoring shop in Regent Street and Stanley took this over after the War. I popped in there some time in 1946, but he was not in the shop that day.

As ever, the personalities of colleagues were of remarkable interest. One of the Sisters was domineering, definite and determined; another was vague and rather self-effacing. We girls were convinced that the inflexible one would be great under stress and the other not so good. It proved just the opposite. There was quite a large span of ages amongst us V.A.D's - nineteen to thirty-five I should think. And we seemed to come from every walk of life, including the aristocracy. (I read recently that Lady Violet Powell, daughter of the fifth Earl of Longford and wife of Anthony Powell was a V.A.D. like me in the River Emergency Service.)

Only once do I remember the ship moving at night and that was to see if we could be of any help when the City was set on fire on 29th December,1940. But, our ship being made of wood, we could not even approach the shore and had to watch the awful sight quite helplessly. We didn't take part in Dunkirk either, which upset us a lot. I believe that a neighbouring fire-float did go. Certainly we saw masses of small boats going down the Thames and wondered what could be happening. Our uniform was very practical : navy great-coat, shirts, trousers and ski-cap - with flaps for use in bad weather. Before going to Bermondsey, we were billeted in the Children's' Hospital in Shadwell and the boat was then at Wapping. On our walks from the mooring to the billets, we were often stoned by boys who shouted ruderies about 'nurses in trousers'. I suppose women wearing trousers were then thought to be 'unnatural'. We were not popular with the nurses at the Children's' Hospital either because their doctors came with our male staff into our quarters in the hospital. We had a sort of 'games-room - mostly for table-tennis I think. But we V.A.D.s were at the mercy of those hospital nurses in charge of our training and they saw to it that we were allotted the most menial and unpleasant of jobs.

I enjoyed my time in the R.E.S. - it was quite exciting and we were a good team. We played a lot of badminton. Gwen was my partner and we never lost a game ! We also frequented The Prospect of Whitby quite a bit.

Despite all this, I left in 1941. The first Blitz and the Battle of Britain were over. So things were dull on that front AND my father was always complaining that he didn't have me educated just to muck about in boats - we learned to row quite adequately and to use semaphore. Both were fun.

In June, 2001, I had to have a scan done of my back because of sciatica. I was given a number of questions to answer beforehand : for example 'Do you have a pace-maker?' I could answer all of them save the one which asked if I had any shrapnel in my body from a wound. I remembered that I had been hit on board - in my bottom - but I really didn't know whether any shrapnel had got into me, or whether it was just a scratch. Whichever, it was a very slight affair. The young man I had to report this to, was delighted. Nobody had answered the question that way before. He had to check whether the scan could go ahead. It could and it did and I was informed that the shrapnel is still there ! After sixty years ! This news made the young man's day ! I can hardly remember the event, It must have been most trivial, But I do hope that I was appropriately heroic !

On hearing this story, Fiona - my colleague - and Michael - my manager - at the Citizen's Advice Bureau where I am a volunteer, found it very amusing. And they had various suggestions and comments :

My husband tells me that I must have been a victim of 'friendly fire' i.e. that I was hit by a piece of one of our own Anti-Aircraft shells. He says that had it come from a German bomb, I would probably have been blown to bits. This hasn't got quite the same cachet somehow …….it doesn't amount to much, just a victim of 'friendly fire'.

I entered into correspondence to get some official details about the R.E.S. but these are few and far between. The librarian of the Museum in Docklands gives as his opinion 'the R.E.S. records were destroyed shortly after War for reasons of confidentiality' I find that quite amazing if he is correct and would love to know the reasons.

Further information from Oriel Williams, the Curator of the Museum, has reminded me that of course the R.E.S. was formed to provide on the Thames, an equivalent service to that given on land by the Civil Defence. Therefore the ambulance service was only a part - I had rather tended to think of it as the whole !

I was also reminded that A.P.Herbert served in the R.E.S. He was a very witty author and an M.P. and wrote an account of his service under the title of 'The Thames at War'. We saw him quite often on the water and I remember he brought C.B.Cochran, the successful impresario to visit us. I had quite a long conversation with them both and couldn't help wondering whether Cochran was looking for girls for his famous chorus line ! If so, he didn't choose any of us …………

The first real air-raid on London was on 7th September,1940. This happened also to be my brother's wedding day, at which I was one of the bridesmaids. The wedding was in Hampstead and went off very well. That evening the two bridesmaids and the two ushers went to the Trocadero Restaurant in Piccadilly Circus for dinner and dancing. Good fun, but when we came out from the restaurant to go home, there was no transport to be had. It was all quite bewildering, with bombs going off and fire engines dashing around. We had been quite unaware of anything happening above us. As we girls couldn't get to our own homes, it was decided that the boys would take us back to their digs in Hampstead. And so we walked there. Quite a long way and rather quaint in long dresses !

The author during the war.

Lashings of make-up, particularly lipstick was considered essential if one was to be 'attractive'- the modern word is 'sexy' ! Another essential was high heels - I tottered about like mad. Of course we all smoked - some like chimneys. Note the 'manicured' eyebrows and I still had my broken tooth !

Although there were sixty seven consecutive nights of bombing, only two stand out in my mind : 29th December,1940, when the City of London was set on fire, and 10th May, 1941 when, instead of the usual targets of railways and docks, there was a more widespread raid on London. About fifteen hundred people were killed and eighteen hundred injured. At the time of the first of these two raids, I was on the Thames, in the River Emergency Service. We watched the dreadful sight but could not get close enough to give any help.

My father was also totally against first-aiders and considered them a danger to the public - who should only be looked after by professionals like him i.e. doctors and proper nurses. So when I heard that Postal Censorship were seeking staff, I applied feeling quite confident I wouldn't be accepted but that the move would appease my father and shut him up for a bit !

Memories of the Wartime Censorship 1941-45

In my interview, I was closely questioned about my connection with the German family I spent 1936-1937 with in Bensburg bei Köln. I didn't expect to be accepted, but I was ! I was engaged to be an examiner, to read letters in English, French and German. I considered I 'had' two languages but Postal Censorship didn't count French because 'everybody knows French, naturally' !

The department I started in dealt with airmail to the United States and Switzerland and was mostly in English and German, 'though there was some French and Italian as well. Many of the letters in German were very difficult to read : they were written on both sides of very transparent paper (airmail paper) and sometimes the reverse side of the paper was written diagonally AND the writers often used a very old-fashioned style of writing called Schrift. This was full of loops and the letter 's' looked like an 'f'. Fortunately I had been taught this in Germany. It was not in general use even then and I doubt if anyone uses it nowadays - it's probably not even known about !

On my very first day I met Karin. She became one of my very best friends. We shared a flat in Grays Inn Road which was nice and handy for the Holborn office. We never lost touch after the war. She died in 1996 and I miss her very much. As beginners, we were both extremely nervous and actually shook ! It was good not to be the only new girl. Karin was half-Norwegian so she had that language as well. There was not a lot of call for Norwegian and eventually she left Postal Censorship to go to the Admiralty where she worked in the very secret department which organised undercover operations in Norway, certainly, and perhaps other places as well.

We all sat at old-fashioned school desks arranged in rows. There were quite a number of examiners in each section - twenty or thirty I would say. Any query or doubt we met with, we had to take to the section leader who was usually able to make a decision, 'though sometimes she needed to consult higher Authority. As the mail was out-going, the main thing we had to look out for was any indiscretion which might tell the enemy where a target for bombers could be found e.g. 'there was an air-raid last night and a lot of damage was done, but fortunately they missed the power station across the road'. If the writer's address was given, the whole reference to the air-raid had to be cut out. It would not have been enough just to cut out 'the power station', Note the offending words were cut out - we did not 'blue pencil' anything ! We examiners were not allowed to do the cutting. We consulted the section leader and if she agreed excision was necessary, she did it. Sometimes the letters looked like paper chains and of course anything written on the back was also lost. All the letters had to be opened in the same way i.e. down the left hand short side and never across the top in the usual way. This was to avoid tearing the sheets. We sealed the envelopes with our numbered labels - each examiner had her own number. One day, I read a letter going to Switzerland which struck me as odd. It seemed that a lot of girls were involved, but what was it ? Later that morning I had a similar letter. The first one had not by then been collected, so I was able to take them both to the section leader. We both thought it might be a white-slave operation and she decided to pass the letters to her superiors. I heard nothing directly about this, but some time later she congratulated me on 'a good piece of work', but she named nothing specific. I imagine this was to prevent any lapse of security - we couldn't go down the pub and talk indiscriminately of what we had done !

I found the acronyms put on love letters quite amusing : SWALK - Sealed with a loving kiss; BOLTOP - Better on lips than on paper; ITALY - I trust and love you; HOLLAND - Hope our love lasts and never dies; but considering that the writers must have been aware that their letters were likely to be read by censors, I was sometimes pretty surprised at what I read !

After a while in my first department, I was transferred to work in the Prisoner of War department where I read in and out mail. The in-mail included the twenty-five word messages on Red Cross forms which, under the Geneva Convention, newly-captured prisoners were permitted to send home. It was amazing how much some of them were able to convey in twenty-five words. Amongst these messages I read many times that conditions at the camp were good and this statement would be followed by the request 'be sure to tell Joe (or Jack or whoever) in the Marines. Collins English Dictionary describes 'tell it to the Marines' as an expression of disbelief. Quite a neat way of saying the opposite, but we did wonder how the German censors failed to detect the code - they must have found it a bit odd that so many Prisoners of War had friends or relatives in the Marines ! Or perhaps they just thought that the Royal Marines was a very large Corps ?

Of course some of the letters were very touching and sad. Some though, were full of malice like the writers for instance who considered it their 'duty' to inform men who were prisoners that their girl friends or wives were going out with other men - often American soldiers. I had to pass several of these but one day I got one such which was sent anonymously. I just couldn't bring myself to put my label on and send it through - I tore it into little bits and threw them down the lavatory. I didn't tell anyone, and I suppose that if it had become known, I would have been sacked.

There were of course specialist departments where we could seek help. One was the Uncommon Languages Department, manned by people who knew every language you could think of - and more ! They all seemed to me to look very clever and 'other-worldly'. You could easily imagine that they might well boil their watches whilst watching the egg ! (This was a description of intellectuals in the days of pocket watches.)

The three Services were represented and I often had to go and consult an R.A.F. Officer called Freddie Ashton (later Sir Frederick Ashton, the Ballet dancer and choreographer) whom I spoke to a lot. One day I found him laughing heartily : an examiner had shown him a letter written by a balletomane in which she said : 'I've just heard that Freddie is in the R.A.F. As I write this, he may be bombing Germany !' Freddie was only too relieved that he was not, and never likely to be. If I met him on the bus in the morning, I knew that I was late !

After another while, I was moved again, this time to be P.A. to the head of the Prisoner of War Department. This meant that, as well as acting as her Secretary etc, I read rather special mail, most of it being in Diplomatic Bags, both to and from German and British Prisoners of War. Some of these were prominent people in one way or another. They certainly wrote interesting letters. One English married couple I particularly remember, wrote the most marvellous letters to each other that I have ever read either in real life or in fiction. And they sustained themselves in this way during a long and very difficult separation. One felt quite humbled and privileged to have to read their letters.

The Diplomatic Bag did not reach me in a bag, which was a disappointment ! The unfolded papers, two to four inches deep, were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. When everything had been dealt with, I had to parcel the lot up again and take the bundle to a messenger to pass on. One day he showed me how to do up a parcel properly and make a really decent job of it. He said he couldn't bear my efforts any longer ! To this day, I do up parcels with paper and string exactly as he showed me.

I don't think we ever paused to wonder if we were doing a worthwhile job in Postal Censorship, but looking back after nearly sixty years, I am glad to have been involved in such work. Whether it - or I - did anything to hasten the end of the War is of course impossible for me to say. Anyway, the end came.

I was asked to stay on and work on documents to be put in the archives. Presumably I would have been doing this with my Prisoner of War Department boss, which I would have enjoyed as she was a good person to work with. I also had another attractive offer : to go to Vienna as P.A. to a senior Medical Officer in the Control Commission. But I had met my husband to be Bob, and decided for him against all the other proposals !

My colleagues were all women but a good mixture of age and nationality. One very compassionate Italian was always very moved when she read anything sad or sentimental. And she naturally had to share her emotions with her neighbours. We couldn't get to know everyone very well but I made another friend besides Karin. This was an older woman. I think she was possibly the most attractive person I have ever met : very good to look at, terrifically intelligent and quick witted, great fun and quite unaware how charming she was ! She was half-Belgian and her French was impeccable. But she was unhappily married. It was a real tragedy; her husband had to be certified ('sectioned' today) and when the time came for the actual procedure to be carried out, she asked me to accompany her. Even for me, it was a terrible day…………. She married again after the War and went to live abroad. We gradually lost touch. I didn't make much attempt to pursue my friendship - I felt that she had started a new life and didn't need any reminder of her past unhappiness.

By the time of the second memorable air raid, 10th May, 1941, and living in digs in Oakley Street, Chelsea. My father, by now in the R.A.M.C. (the Royal Army Medical Corps), had been posted from the Royal Herbert Hospital in Woolwich to the Military Hospital in Bath, and of course my mother had gone with him. So I had no home in London any more.

My landlady was named Mabel. She had strong theatrical connections and tendencies. She was an Air Raid Warden and took her duties very seriously : on the night of the big raid, she goaded all her tenants - we were all young and able-bodied - out onto the street to go and inform householders, who were themselves mostly sheltering in their cellars, that their attics were on fire, and to help them use their stirrup-pumps to dowse the flames. On another occasion, several of us girls went to Soho with Mabel for a meal. In the restaurant, we noticed two men who were acting suspiciously : they were studying a map in a very furtive manner. When they left the restaurant, Mabel ordered me to follow them ! I did because you tended to do what Mabel told you ! I felt quite inadequate and was much relieved when they got into a car and drove off. However, I did manage to note the number and colour of the car. Mabel duly reported these details to the police, who interviewed us. Later that night they told us they had traced the men, who were found to be loyal subjects, 'though they admitted that the map - whatever it was - was a secret document that they should not have had with them in public. Good old Mabel !

Soon after this, I moved into a flat in the Grays Inn Road with Karin. We had met as new girls in the Postal Censorship Office which was in High Holborn, so my new home was very conveniently placed.

As I remember it, 'normal' air-raids meant high-explosive bombs and incendiary bombs. The latter of course caused lots of fires, but did not explode like the high-explosive kind. There were also land-mines. These seemed to be dropped by parachute, quite indiscriminately i.e. not on normal targets like railways. They had huge explosive power : whole streets were sometimes annihilated. I remember, when my parents were still in London, coming home after four days duty on the river, to find the house empty and a HUGE whole in the back garden. Where was my mother ? Thankfully, safely out shopping. On occasion, landmines did not explode on impact. Streets and buildings then had to be evacuated and the whole area cordoned off. You couldn't take anything with you beyond what you could pick up and easily carry. Then bomb-disposers came in and made the mines safe. What heroes ! We had a Naval friend - Peter (more of him later) - who sometimes did this. When forced to, he would recount how he was fęted by grateful residents and loaded with presents e.g. watches - which of course could not be accepted.

Karin and I grew accustomed to the High Explosive raids and had a code - mostly unspoken - that we lived by. This included not being found dead with our hair in rollers. So if the sirens went, and that was the case, we took the rollers out. And put them back in again when the All Clear sounded. Sometimes this could happen as many as three times a night. Our flat was on the ground floor - a good thing - and on a corner. My bed was close to a large window and one night when we thought the bombs were getting uncomfortably close, I slept in Karin's room - we each had a bed-sitting room. The next morning we found my bed covered in broken glass.

We went to the cinema a lot and saw many famous films e.g. Lawrence Olivier's Henry V. Apart from loving the films and enjoying a break from raids, going to the cinema was attractive because we were safe - below ground and no glass. People who had cellars under their houses were lucky - they could sleep down there in comparative safety. Others had Anderson shelters. These were made of arches of corrugated iron and were partly buried in the ground so that they were protected by earth and grass.

Indoors, there were Morrison shelters which were steel-topped tables with wire-mesh sides and you slept underneath or possibly dived under when necessary ! Of course not everyone was lucky enough to have anything. Whilst we did not enjoy the raids, we were not scared stiff. However, things changed for me - and presumably many other people - one night, when I became aware of something very curious going on. And Karin - normally the calmest - went nearly berserk, saying we were going to be killed. I asked what it was and she said that she couldn't tell me because it was secret. She had moved from Postal Censorship to the Admiralty where her knowledge of Norway and Norwegian was of more use to the Country. She worked in an office where - so to speak - undercover operations were organised. The work was so secret that the maps which covered the office walls and showed operations, were curtained over when anyone other than immediate staff was there. I pressed her to tell me, saying that if I was going to be killed, I was surely entitled to know by what. She did, and of course it was the first V1's - or 'doodlebugs' as they came to be known. Through her work, Karin had learned about Peenemunde, where these bombs were made.

I was always frightened of the 'doodlebugs' and took cover away from glass - particularly shops' plate glass windows - wherever possible, when the engines of these pilotless planes cut out. If you were aware of this, you knew the bombs would be falling close to you.

On one occasion, we were watching a film in which Errol Flynn was winning the war in the Far East single-handed. There was a scene where some refugees were trying to escape - ? from Singapore - on a boat. The engines failed and one character said 'The engine's stopped - what can it be?'. I couldn't resist shouting out 'It must be a 'doodlebug'. The audience was appreciative.

I don't actually remember going to any public air-raid shelter, We weren't heroic or anything, but just got on with whatever we were doing. We didn't talk about the danger. We didn't go in for much analysis in those days and this protected us. We certainly were never tempted to sleep in an Underground station. Many of our neighbours in Grays Inn Road did so, and we used to see them at Chancery lane - our local tube station - when we returned from the cinema or whatever. They used to tell us what had happened earlier in the evening before they went to the station. This was usually encouraging : 'A couple H.E.s - but your flat is OK love.'

The V1s were followed in due course by the V2s. These were also pilotless weapons, but they just fell from the sky - so to speak 'out of the blue'. There was no period when you could take cover because you couldn't hear them at all until they exploded. The explosion was very loud. We used to say that you were OK if you heard the explosion. If you hadn't …………

At one point I suffered a bad attack of sciatica and had to use a stick. This was marvellous : everyone was helpful when I got on and off buses and seats were freely offered to me. Of course it was assumed that I was an air-raid victim. I did not confess. People would just have felt 'let-down' and possibly I didn't wish to acknowledge how slight my 'injury' was. Bob - who later became my husband - was also in a similar situation. He and a friend were on leave and went to the Odeon cinema. One of them was on crutches and the other had an arm in a sling. Both were wearing their Army uniforms. They had settled into perfectly adequate seats when the Manager - presumably believing them to be possible heroes, insisted that they move to the best seats at no cost. The truth was that one had injured his ankle playing hockey and the other had a boil ! Hardly heroic stuff !

Karin and I had a pretty hectic social life : we had a number of relatives in the Forces and this meant a great amount of traffic in our flat. Karin's cousins always seemed to be escaping from Norway and mine were often on their way to the Far East. All this entailed a good deal of partying ! We visited pubs and night clubs and palais de dance. Ballroom dancing was very popular - and of course the bands and singers. All the popular music appealed to me, particularly : 'All the things you are', 'The white cliffs of Dover', 'When the lights go on again', 'Lilli Marlene'. And the bands of Henry Hall, Carroll Gibbons, Joe Loss and the singers Vera Lynn and Anne Shelton.

I still believe there is nothing to beat dancing to music played by live players. One night we were doing just this with a party of friends in a night club, but it was an unusual night club in that it was above ground - in fact on the first floor. So when the sirens went we were all aware there was a raid on. The dancing went on and in due course the All Clear was sounded. One of our party was a very brave man in the Navy who defused land-mines et al, in cold blood. When the raid was over, Peter was nowhere to be seen. He finally emerged from under a table where he had been taking shelter. He said he could not understand how we civilians seemed to disregard danger. Rather ironically he had the ill-luck to step on a mine on a beach in Italy. Mercifully he didn't lose his foot but of course he was invalided home where he went about on crutches. He recommended this condition most heartily, as being the best possible for getting taxis.

Of course, most of the fit young men and many young women were in uniform. They did look good, even glamorous in some cases. There was rivalry between the different arms of the Services, and they often called each other by uncomplimentary names e.g. the R.A.F. called the Army 'brown jobs'. I'm sure many other rude names were used. The Poles and the Americans were not popular because they pinched the girls from the British, the Poles being considered too charming and the Americans too well-off. There was also friction when men not in the fighting forces thought they were being sneered at and found wanting. I remember in a pub one evening pointing out to a Naval friend, a man in khaki uniform with the words 'War Correspondent' on his shoulder. We both considered such people very courageous because they went into and near battles with no means to defend themselves, just a camera. But this particular man thought that we were belittling him when he noticed us looking at him. He came over to us and was most belligerent. It took some time to persuade him how wrong he had been.

We were very conscious of the dangers of careless talk - reminded by the famous poster 'Careless Talk Costs Lives', and generally we were most patriotic. This, and our youth, must have made it easier to bear the deprivations caused by the food and clothing and petrol and hot water rationing - a five inch bath was the limit; the difficulties of getting about in the blackout; the Air Raid Wardens and their cry of 'put that light out'……… We trusted Churchill implicitly and were inspired by the conduct of our fighting men. Some things will never be forgotten - the smell left behind after an air-raid - I've never known precisely what caused this but assume that it must have been the explosive and the subsequent fire; the death of so many people; the terrible damage done to buildings; the seemingly extraordinary way baths were left exposed but looking as if they were clinging to those walls which remained standing; the way that Londoners never lost their sense of humour and were true neighbours to each other. We experienced many acts of comradeship and kindness, as for instance the butcher who invited me to share the safety of his cold-room, when we could hear a 'doodlebug' was just about to descend. Neither of us thought about the danger of blast which might have caused us to be incarcerated and then frozen; we were just glad to be able to escape the flying glass from his shop window. This happened to me in my lunch hour and I was later able to tell my boss - I was by then working in Postal Censorship - that I had been frozen with fear !

There is no doubt that the spirit shown by ordinary people during the War generally, and during the Blitzes in particular, was a wonderful inspiration and source of strength to all of us. The courage of people who had the responsibility of looking after small children whilst their fathers were overseas and very likely in danger, and the courage of those who were bereaved was most touching. It was a good time to be British and we were proud of it.

Ruth Durrant

The Wartime Memories Project
- Women in World War Two

ADELAIDE HALL

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR YEARS