About the contributor

My Mum Elsie Blake was in the ATS and worked as a shorthand typist. She was stationed at Luton Hoo and billited on Doris and Jim Coulter in Strathmore Avenue. She told me how they arrived in an open truck, their name was called and out they got. It was pot luck if they had good billets but she did and remained good friends with them until they died. Later in the war she moved to Hounslow Barracks where she met my father Stanley Waddington. They married after the war had ended. My Mum died in 1998 but had she been alive she would have loved to be involved in the celebrations so I feel I am doing it on her behalf. Does anybody remember her during the war years?