“The Officer’s Mess was opposite the main barracks in Queen Street. That was bombed and it hit our parade ground. We just managed to get into the shelter as it fell. All the debris was coming behind us as we went in.
“My mother went all through the raids...her nerves seemed to go, so we decided that we had better take her back to her sister in Nelson (Lancs.)...I had to leave (the Navy) and eventually we went up there in the summer of ’41...My sister and I stayed on a week and then we went on to Blackpool and got a job in the aircraft factory there. We stayed for about six months...Then we got another job in another aircraft factory in Walton on Thames...I was on a lathe making components...You had to use a micrometer...absolutely minute (tolerances) and to a high standard, if it wasn’t just right it was thrown away. “My husband had been killed...mined or torpedoed, they never knew...I got married again in ’43, that was when we decided to come back to Portsmouth. I became pregnant, so I didn’t work again. I’d booked onto a place in Walton on Thames to have Annette. My husband had said it was not going to be safe in Portsmouth, because of the ‘second front’, D-day you know...I’d just got off the train and a buzz bomb fell on the other side of the station. You heard the rush of air as it fell and blew up. They said it was why I had Annette a fortnight early. She wanted to see what was going on. “After D-Day (my husband) went to the Far East. he didn’t come back until November ’46. He went to both sites of the atom bomb, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. That had a dreadful effect on him. They went ashore to help set up the essential services, and it just devastated him...to see those people that were still alive but badly disfigured, that must have been awful.” |
“I was 19 (when the war started). I worked for Timothy Whites then and then I went into the Civil Service...I lived in Knowsley Road, (Portsmouth), we were out there in the shelter one night...all our windows were blown out and when they were bombing here all the Junkers were coming across. (We could see) the crosses, they were right on top of us...
“I used to ride my bike all over Portsmouth...(during a raid) I went down an air raid shelter in Fratton Bridge and a woman had a baby. Of course I was young and innocent in those days...I ran away and came home... “In 1942 I went in the Army...I didn’t volunteer I was conscripted. I was in Ack - Ack...I was on the predictor which laid the guns on (to the target)...the men used to fire the guns. We were posted to Bude, to firing camp, then to Woking...we were at Ramsgate in Kent...all over the country. We were posted to Ashford because that was when the ‘doodle bugs’ were about and that was really bad...When we were at Ramsgate...we had to go down the trenches...they were firing from France, the guns and that... “We were in Windsor Great Park for a year. On Sundays we weren’t allowed to put washing out or do anything like that in case the Queen came through... “(In 1945) My battery went to Antwerp, but my husband (to be) wouldn’t let me go...The few of us left were all put in ordnance factories, in Derby...” |