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This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Eleanor Fell, on behalf of Emily Marsh and has been added to the site with her permission, she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was living in Mitcham, Surrey and I decided I wanted to be an Ack-Ack girl, because I had a cousin who was a Sergeant trainer of the Ack-Ack girls. She had made it sounds glamorous so I joined the army in 1942. After my training in Shropshire I was posted to Bedworth, just outside Coventry until 1943. During my time in Coventry my main duty was to let the army gunners on the gunsites know the location of the enemy planes, so that they could fire and shoot them down.

After the Coventry bombings were over, my unit was posted down to Essex and we were taken to an empty field for the whole day. There was nothing there, just our unit - about 60 of us. We had arrived in the morning after an overnight train journey from Coventry. It wasn't until the evening that all the Services arrived with our tents and equipment and got everything put up and organised. Luckily it was a lovely summers day so we just sat on the grass and enjoyed the peace and quiet!

In Essex we had to start training with new equipment that came from America, once we were trained and settled in, the first of the V1 (Doodlebugs) started to fly over and we began to start to fight back.

I remember that the weather became really bad and we were only under canvas tents. Someone notifed a national newspaper about the terrible conditions we were in and as a result all of our equipment and beds etc were moved to Maldon Town Hall, and my bed was set up on the stage! So I went to sleep at night dry and warm with the curtains of the stage either side of me!

Straight after our move our unit was hard at work again as the V2 started to come over.

During my time with the 534 Royal Artillery Battery one of the things I remember most is our first Christmas under canvas. Despite being in the middle of a field in Essex in tents, we had everything you could wish for - turkey, stuffing, christmas pudding and cake and a big party. we all ate our dinner together in the big canteen tent and afterwards we had music and dancing with our feet in the mud!

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