GPO telephonist 1944 - 1945

GPO Telephonist 1944 - 1945

During the last year of the war I left school and started work as a GPO telephonist.
After training and gaining enough experience of the usual switchboard operating we had extra training to man an emergency Exchange deep in a reinforced shelter under the Sorting Office, reached by underground passages.
This and other information we had access to was highly secret and we were always reminded that we were bound by the Official Secrets Act. The Air Raid Warning system went through the Exchange and it was tested at 3 pm every day.
It was a matter of pride to get calls connected as quickly as possible even though a lot of the lines were damaged by raids and we had to cope with hours of delay to London and other cities. We were supposed to connect strictly to the official routes but most of us found different ways to get the calls through. However, now and again we would get the information - 'There is no communication to ---' and we knew then that the town had suffered a really bad raid and we had no hope of connecting to that area.
We had regular practice sessions of operating whilst wearing our specially adapted gas masks - woe betide any one who had left theirs in their locker! It was usually quite funny as the masks made disgusting noises if you laughed and of course the more you laughed the noisier it got.
A number of the girls had boy friends or husbands in the Forces and had to be comforted when bad news came through. One poor girl in Telegrams was operating the teleprinter sending the message to her fiancé's parents that he was missing, believed killed.
In those days of manual switchboards each subscriber had a terminal on the board with its own little light, white ones for private lines and red ones for call boxes. Therefore when Victory came and everyone wanted to call someone, the Exchange was like Blackpool Illuminations. We had no hope at all of giving swift service but luckily most of the callers were understanding and some commiserated with us at having to work at a time when everyone was out celebrating The telephonist sitting next to me was quite cross when, after advising the caller that there was no reply to her call, was told “You are not trying, I can see them in the garden” On the whole though it was quite an experience to be working on that day.
I was going out with a Pilot Officer stationed near Northampton at that time and he met me out of work when I finished at 8pm. He had a fellow officer with him who didn't want to be alone on such a momentous day so, of course, we asked him to join us. The three of us went for a meal in town and then joined in the festivities on the Market Square
When I got home, much later, I found that my brother, an RAF pilot, had managed to drive home for a few hours and he and Dad had formed a Victory "V" in our front garden using coloured Christmas tree lights.
He also ‘floodlit’ me with the car headlights as my Pilot Officer kissed me goodnight at the corner of the street but we didn’t care, it just made one more laugh in a very happy day.

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