A Woman's Story of Wartime London, Devon and beyond

My father had served in the West Surrey Regiment in the first World War and seen a lot of action as an infantryman. As a child I would listen to dad talking with my uncles about trench warfare. He was wounded twice and his vivid description of mud, blood and gore gave me bad dreams. So when war was inevitable in September 1939 I was fearful. I was nearly 16 and lived in south London with my parents and 2 brothers aged 14 and 8. At the time I worked for the Daily Herald as a copy typist and travelled 10 miles to work just off the Strand each day. When war was declared the department closed down and I got a job as a progress clerk with Elliott's engineering firm which made instruments for RAF planes and naval vessels. My job was to keep track of the instruments.

Back at home, I remember helping to dig the hole for the Anderson shelter and put up the blackout curtains and shutters. The shelter took about a week to put up. Dad was a keen gardener and knew the depth of the water table so didn't go down too deep. Thanks to his experience in trench warfare he reinforced the sides and top of the shelter with railway sleepers covered in earth and turf. Ours was the only shelter around that was dry all through the war. Later on when dad was at work, I was in the ATS and my brother was in the Guards Armoured Division, my mother was alone in the shelter with my young brother when two houses next door got a direct hit, both disappearing in clouds of dust. I was with Elliott's for about a year. When the raids became continuous and the night sky was red with fires in the East End of London, dad decided to send my younger brother and me to Devon for a break. We were not happy to go.

We stayed with a family at Alphington, 4 miles from Exeter. I got a job right away with a firm called Wippells but after a fortnight my mother said she would rather be bombed to death than be bored to death so went back to London. I could not get released from Wippells, a very old firm making surplices for the clergy. In fact they were church furnishers but now made drogues and parachutes for dropping supplies to the troops. I had to learn to be a machinist and at age 17 was working 3 shifts - early, late and night - for 12 hours at a stretch six days a week. There was no public transport to get me to work for the early and late shifts so I had to walk starting out at 5.15am to get to work at 6am. Sometimes the buses were non-existent so I had to walk home as well. I was fit to drop at times what with meeting the quota of garments and keeping my eyes open at 3am while working on dark blue material.

Devon was a totally different way of life for me. I do not recall any food shortages in 1940/41. There was always plenty of eggs, butter and milk to make Devon clotted cream which we had every Sunday. The milk was delivered in churns drawn by a horse and cart. You went with your jug to have the rich milk ladled out. Vegetables were plentiful and the bread was home baked. While I was there we only had one air raid warning - while I was working at night.

Aunt Bessie was the aunt of the lady I lived with. She was about 5ft, plumpish and rosy-cheeked with black hair parted down the middle and a coil of hair over each ear. She lived in a typical Devon cobb cottage with a thatched roof and a long garden. She was the village launderess. She worked for the local gentry and anyone else who could afford her services. The laundry was a long building with a wash house one end and ironing tables along one wall. There were round iron stoves with shelves round the outside to rest irons of all shapes and sizes. There were clothes lines in the laundry but on dry days the three lines in the gardens were a sight to see with the snowy white linen dancing in the breeze. All the ironing was done by hand and it was lovely to smell the clean laundry. Clothes were on coupons and I can remember aunt Bessy's distress when she unfortunately flushed the curates' collars down the drain and could not replace them. That was about the biggest calamity of the war that I can recall whilst I was in Devon. At about that time Lord Haw Haw, the German wireless propagandist, said the Luftwaffe were going to raze Exeter to the ground. The attempt came long after I left. I was released from Wippells on my 18th birthday and went back to London to my family.

I got a job at the Gleniffer Laundry, 10 minutes' walk from home. A vastly different laundry from aunt Bessie's, I joined the accounts department and was responsible for the civilian monthly accounts. After about a month, one of the girls got married and another had a baby so I was also responsible for the Forces' accoutns including the RAF at Biggin Hill and hundreds of army units around London. I had to deal with irate staff when bundles of the odd socks etc were missing. We had plenty of air raid warnings but never actually had bombs drop too close. Everybody had to fire watch. I learned how to handle a 1-ton fire fighting tender. apart from falling out of the top bunk whilst on fire watch and getting concussion, nothing really happened.

I was called up in November 1942 aged 19 but was deferred for 6 months because the Forces Laundry was considered war work. After six months I said I didn't want to be deferred again, much to my mother's annoyance. I felt excited and apprehensive about what was to come. Along with hundreds of other women I boarded a train to Pontefract in May 1943. On arrival we were marched in a very long line a very long way to the barracks which dated back to the 1800's and had blocks named after past battles. I saw for the first time children playing in the streets with no shoes or socks on. My uniform included a skirt like a bell tent, lisle stockings and passion killer knickers. There was a long drab overall and mug, knife and fork held rigidly to the side as you marched to and from meals. The shoes were so hard, walking was agony. After a day's marching I had blisters on my blisters and bloodsoaked stocking feet. The chiropodist put felt in my shoes to lift my heels and said they'd get better. Certainly, my feet got harder and the shoes must have got softer because I cannot remember ever being excused from drill.

Corunna Block was built for soldiers. It had 4 barrack rooms with 40 double bunks in each but only one small washroom and toilet on each floor so we had to go outside to the ablution block to wash. It did not come easy to strip off and wash en masse but we got used to it. One day there was a lot of giggling outside the block as someone had crossed out ablution and written abortion. Such was my ignorance I didn't know what abortion was. I was 19 years old.

There was a job assessment room where you were asked what you wanted to do and told what was on offer that week. They clearly wanted me to be a clerk, after all, I had been a clerk so what was the problem? No, I wanted to be a driver. No I could not drive. No my daddy did not own a car. No I did not ride a bicycle. But I must have put those bits of Meccano together properly because I was accepted for driver training.

It took place at Gresford, a huge training camp with a very large house for officers' messes and recreational rooms and wooden huts in the grounds for us. The training took ten weeks. We learned to drive anything from an 8HP Austin, rather like Noddy's little car, to a K2 Ambulance with a wicked crash gearbox. We also learned how they worked, how to service them and fault find in case we broke down, map reading (all place names from towns to villages had been removed) and endless documentation. Vehicles had to be kept clean inside, outside and underneath so that defects could be spotted easily, we were told. We knew of course that it was so that workshop mechanics would not get their hands dirty. Training was a hard slog with tests every week and RTUd if you were not up to scratch. I enjoyed the course, especially the driving but was so anxious beforehand I had to go to the loo before driving each morning.

My bunk space companion was older than me, about 30. She was married to the editor of the Daily worker. She was a Communist and was very clever. She told us our rights. Every Sunday we had church parade and all had to go to church. I was not very happy about it and always questioned the whys and wherefores of things I wasn't happy with. I was very shy but a bit Bolshie. Rules I could comply with if they made sense but orders are different, especially if given by somebody with one stripe and feeling her feet. At Pontefract our platoon sgt was strict but fair put the platoon L/cpl was not and on or last night there somebody put holly leaves under the bottom sheet of her bed. Vonnie Cain told us they could not make us go to church and the upshot was that about six of us refused to go. We went on parade then sat outside in the sunshine while the others sat in a dark church. I heard sometime later that Vonnie Cain had been discharged from the ATS. Towards the end of the course we did convoy training in North Wales going through Corwen and by Swallow Falls. I saw mountains and rushing rivers for the first time. It was magic.

We were posted to Scotland in October 1943, billeted in a large house called Bellwood on Kinoull Hill about two miles outside Perth on the Dundee Road. My reluctance to attend church services must have been noted because I was assigned to the Chaplains branch which meant driving the padre to all the outlying units for Sunday services up to 60 miles away. It meant a 7am start. I had learned to drive in the summer and had only the theory of driving on snow and ice and controlling skids. I learned fast during that winter in Scotland. Plenty of snow, an 8-inch windscreen wiper, no heating in the vehicle and only a canvas hood with lots of holes for the wind to blow. It was cold. Indoors wasn't much better. Home was a hut with a single layer of metal for the roof, concrete floor covered with a strip of coconut matting and ill fitting windows and doors. In the freezing Scottish winter it is a wonder we survived. I know for a fact that my mug of water I put on the floor by my bed at night was frozen in the morning. We had the regulation stove in the hut but could not light it before 4pm. I came in from a detail about 3.30pm one day. No one was about so I thought I would light the fire so that the hut would be warm when the others came back. I forgot the smoke went up the chimney and past the COY office. I was admonished for disobeying orders and wasting fuel.

Rev Linkie was a kindly chap aged about 50. We got along fine with lots of meaningful conversation. When we had padre's hour at Bellwood, he would give us a thought for the day and if nobody responded he would say. "Come away Miss Doswell,". I would put a controversial question which caused a bit of an argument and soon the rest of the girls would be putting their point of view.

After a few months I was posted to Dunfermline and I drove a captain in charge of the army camps in Fife at a time when a lot of Polish troops were coming into Scotland. The captain was a bumptious bully and universally disliked. He expected me to stop on a button and never told me to turn until we were up to the corner and then would start shouting if we had to reverse. Very often I would be leading several vehicles. One day when there were four vehicles in line, he said stop, I did and the vehicles went bump, bump, bump. He shot out of the car. Leave it to me, he said. I did and thereafter he gave me time to stop. Drivers on out stations were expected to look after their vehicles without supervision but were supposed to be allowed time to keep the vehicles clean and serviced. The captain always expected me to be ready at a moment's notice and would be furious if kept waiting. After constantly being called to the phone when I was doing maintenance and under the vehicle I got fed up. I told him on the phone that he could either have a clean serviced vehicle or a driver on constant call but he could not have both all the time. There was shocked silence in the company office. How could anybody speak to the captain like that? I was shaking inside but I won the day. We came to an agreement.

I have a lot of happy memories of Scotland. I drove hundreds of miles to the little fishing villages of Craithie and Pittenweem to Edinburgh and Dunblane and to the highlands of Pitlochry and Blair Atholl. the people were very kind and if you had been sitting in your car for a time they would bring you a cup of tea and some tea bread. I also love Scottish music and the bagpipes. When in Perth, we used to go on parade sometimes with the Black Watch. There is no feeling like marching behind the pipes and drums even if you could not understand a word of command.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.