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As my mum had been very ill, the doctor suggested I should try for a compassionate posting back to Bournemouth from London. Very soon I was working in an army records office Pioneer and Intelligence Unit, situated in Dunholme Manor on the East Cliff. Here I was to stay until the end of the war.

There were many record offices in Bournemouth with huge contingents of American troops billeted at hotels, in Nissen huts and under canvas around the town. The town itself was bursting with uniforms, which cost us our biggest air raid on a Sunday at about 1pm.

Five German bombers came over the coast and bombs were exploding as the siren wailed. I was having lunch with friends in Frances Road when my host shoved me into the larder, for safety I suppose. Worried about my mother who lived in St.Swithuns Road, I ran out to see a man carrying a young girl in Francis gardens opposite. I thought the worse but later learned that she had fainted with shock. The air was thick with dust and a smell of high explosive as I ran up the road towards my home. A bomber swopped overhead and machine gunned all the way up St.Swithuns Road. I remember the bullets sending up patches of dust and I wondered stupidly who it was in the plane who wanted to kill me. I like to think he was trying to miss me instead.

Rushing into our hall, the letter box flapped wildly from more bullets. My mum stood by looking as white as a ghost. As I was wearing my Red Cross uniform I thought I had better go out and see if I could help anyone. I had passed first aid swotting up during long night raids. It helped to concentrate the mind and eased the dry mouth and knocking knees. With mum protesting, I set off onto the Holderhurst Road.

All the shop windows lay out on the pavement, so I crunched along towards the Lansdowne. Somewhere over the housetops I saw a whole building appear to rise slowly in the air, almost in one piece until it dropped with a roar out of sight. It might have been the Odeon or a hotel packed with Canadians.

The ARP blokes were already on the scene when I got to the Metropole Hotel. There was nothing I could do as it was a direct hit. Smoking bricks except for the facade of the building, where caught in the window frames were bodies swaying. Walking to Horseshoe Common, crowds had gathered to watch a tiny flame coming to life on the roof of Beales. It did not seem possible that by evening the whole building had collapsed where incenderies had struck down the lift shaft. The whole town seemed covered in a black cloud and fire engine bells were coming from all directions. There were 77 civilians killed, 196 injured and many Canadian servicemen also killed and injured. 3,481 buildings had been damaged or destroyed that day.

In my spare time I helped out at Boscombe hospital, in any ward where they were short staffed. As Red Cross nurses we were voluntary and unpaid. We were not treated very well by the other nurses who assumed that we were well off. I hated it in the soldiers ward as they teased me unmercifly. I would be red faced and embarrassed having to scrub bottoms and dust with talcum. The noise and the language was shocking, but I was terribly sorry for patients in the surgical ward because they could not be moved in an emergency.

One lady just up from surgery during a raid complained loudly that now she had been cut up, she was about to be blown up. The Sister in charge was very firm and told her if she did not shut up there would be no cups of tea and custard creams. I thought Sister was a hard woman until I heard someone being sick in the toilet. Out came Sister, white as a bedsheet and shaking like a leaf. After making a supreme effort to pull herself together, she spotted me saying if I breathed a word about her breakdown, she would have my guts for garters.

I was quite good at helping in the operating theatre and thought I was very important wearing all the gear. But as my curiosity got the better of me, I moved closer to the operating table. The surgeon asked me to fetch an oxygen cylinder laying against the wall. When I tried to lift it he yelled "Don't lift it, you bloody fool. What do you think the wheels are for?

I got a bit discouraged after this and was taken on by the American Red Cross stationed in Marsham Court on the cliffs. The American girls did not like us, the the boys did. We were not supposed to date them, but the rule quickly went out of the window. It was pleasant work hearing all about their homes in America, plus looking at photographs of mom and sis, and directing them to the best shops and pubs in town where they would not be ripped off by greedy shopkeepers.

They had wonderful tea dances on Sunday afternoons, with coffee and doughnuts free day and night. I loved it and took a GI home to show my mum. She thought he was gorgeous, just like in the movies. We were friends until the invasion. As he had been fighting in Palermo and was Italian, he had picked up several souvenirs to take home to show his family. But as the invasion was imminent, I kept them hidden in my bedroom until an American sailor collected them some six months later. My mother hit the roof when she found them one day. Hoarding two Luger pistols was against the law at this time, but as he was such a genuine guy I thought it worth the risk.

I would also like to remember a young pilot officer who was crazy about aeroplanes. His family had a fancy dress coustumiers and mum and I worked for them. It was an awful shock when he was shot down and taken prisoner in a neutral country. Eventually he returned to Bournemouth at a time when we were terribly short of pilots. Before long he was training to be a flying instructor. During a practice flight with two other young men the plane crashed. They were all killed. Aged 21 and an only son, his mother told me that he rang her up the day before saying he did not want anything, just to hear her voice. The commemoration service was packed with local people. I could not believe I would never see him again.

It was lovely to enjoy the sea air again, although stuck in the office on a hot day the bay looked so tempting. We were dying for a swim as it was nearly five years since we had enjoyed that pleasure. The beach was out of bounds and the cliffs were a mass of rusting barbed wire with blackened concrete tank traps blocking the promenade. Sometimes our RAF fighters would intercept raiders and we would watch dog fights over the bay. Cursing the enemy with "Get the bastards" or shouting encouragement when we made a killing.

The question on everybody's faces was when and where the invasion would take place. We knew it must be France, but where exactly was anyone's guess. We could see, though it was against regulations to make any comment, that we were getting ready for a big push. The south was a tightly packed arsenal waiting for the off.

Strange moves began at the office. Us civilian clerks were asked into the Colonel's holy of holies once a month where we would be treated to top secret information. The Colonel would string up maps all around his office to indicate where the possible invasion points were. The following month the same routine with different places, until everyone was completely confused. After a while we realised that this was all a brilliant mis-information plan. Clever, because it was quite possible that someone amongst us would have too much booze and leak information. Such a thought never occured to me; I was too scared of being sho or hanged in the Tower.

The Colonel was a colourful figure, with red cheeks to match his shoulder tabs. When the siren went we would rush downstairs into the grounds where the Colonel would be standing waving his stick towards the trenches shouting "Come on ladies, don't turn your pansy faces to the sun". It seemed he had the idea that jerry pilots could spot us. The enemy being only 80 miles away, they came very often. We spent more tome going up and down the stairs than actually in the trenches.

I was usually first in the office because I lived nearby. This morning I was rooted to the spot, tears running down my cheeks. The rest of the clerks stared in disbelief, bawling their heads off likewise. For years we had seen only the sea. Now it was covered with ships and boats, large and small. This was the day we had waited for, although a certain degree of fear and anxiety crept in as we realised there would be a lot more to face yet.

When it was all over we did what we said we would do. Running down the stairs to the cliffs, we found Toft Steps. Through old rusting wire we rushed on down, kicking off our shoes onto the beach. It started as just a paddle, but tucking our dresses into our knickers and shrieking with excitement, we jumped into the waves.

(PK)

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