Doing What I Was Trained For.

When I was called up into the ATS I was prepared to be very co-operative with the Army. I did not mind whether I drove trucks or cars or shot aircraft down or turned searchlights around, but I did not want to work in an office. It was what I had been trained for and I wanted more adventure.
"It is what you have been trained for and we need expert secretaries" said the officer when I explained. "You will be very useful."
So I traipsed around the countryside for a while, filling gaps here and there and really quite enjoying it, and then one day came a message. I must pack my kitbag and report to War Office in London forthwith.
No, they hadn't sent for me to win the war for them or work for Churchill, I was just one of a pool of expert secretaries who had been sent in to cover somebody's leave. I proceeded to look after various rather senior officers, all of whom needed an expert secretary, and then there were wild rejoicings in the requisitioned house in a prestigious London square where our offices were. The Brigadier's expert secretary was pregnant at last and she was going out! She had been waiting for this for ages and it was then that this obscure Lance Corporal would be given a chance to take her place.
Now I had to shed one or two of my senior officers because I typed for the Brigadier himself - a huge Gordon Highlander who had never quite recovered from his shame at being invalided home from the BEF with shingles one week before it all blew up in 1940. All his Highland Division had gone into the bag and he still couldn't bear it. I liked him very much and also his Personal Assistant, for whom I was dogsbody and gap-filler.
Time went by, and I became a Corporal, with an increase in pay of several shillings. The war in Europe was over and Scottish soldiers from the 51st HighlandDivision were trailing home to England. They all seemed to come to visit my Brigadier.
One sunny Sunday, I was on duty alone in the office, which had been the dressing room to the large best bedroom on the second floor of the house. The Brigadier liked Sundays because he could get some "blessed" paperwork done, and he had dictated a whole lot of it and then gone out to lunch. I did not bother with lunch, so I was typing away busily when there was a tentative knock on the door to the landing. I covered my typewriter and went to investigate.
Ther stood a thin, rather worn-looking youngish man in Highland uniform. It was a very new uniform and so I knew him for another POW. But he wasn't bouncing: he looked rather worried.
"Can I help you, Sir?" I asked
He wanted to see the Brigadier, of course.
"I am afraid he is out to lunch," I said. "Will you wait for him or come back? He shouldn't be very long now. I could fix you up with a chair in here and probably find a newspaper for you to read."
"No, no. No paper" he said hastily, retreating onto the landing away from me. "What's in there?"
He indicated the cupboard under the stairs in which we kept the kettle and such stuff and I opened the door for him to see.
"I'll sit in there" he said.
I quickly rattled around and cleared enough room for the chair and placed it in the cupboard, facing out. He firmly turned it around to face the wall.
"Shut the door, please." He said
"But Sir, there is no light in the cupboard. You would be in the dark."
"Yes." he said.
I shut him inside and got on with my work and when the Brigadier came back I intercepted him and explained. He looked sadly at me, and then marched to the cupboard door and pulled it open, reaching in to grip the man's arm and bring him safely out and they went away into the Brigadier's office. They talked for a long time and I got on with what I had been trained to do.......

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