“I joined up in Durham...At twenty one if you didn’t have any responsibility you had to do something. You either had to go into munitions...the land army, or the services...I could already drive, I’d learnt when I was seventeen...
“We collected (vehicles) mostly from factories and then took them to the army camps that wanted them, or back to our depot for distribution at a later date...You had ten in a convoy...and you had to keep your distance. It was no good trying to do more than thirty miles per hour because they were governed... “(Vehicles) would come back to be disposed of. One time us girls had six or seven jeeps and we had to take them down to Acton. We had plenty of tow ropes and as they broke down we’d put them on tow...Well, I went through London with five more on tow behind me... “We picked up the little Hillman vans, Morrises, we went all over the place...We had a coach sometimes. If we hadn’t enough girls they used to take some civillian drivers as well...(at) Morris’ we’d pick up these vans, they’d have big holes around the clutch. A draught used to come up there and some had open (cabs)...The civillians used to run for the closed in ones...They’d sit at the front of the coach so they’d beat us to the closed (cabs)... “We had boys come back to us that had been to, where was it? East Grinstead? (burns unit). We had one come down and he had his face almost like that chap Simon (Weston)? He had been a rear gunner...I think he was on duty at the gate.” |