Lady Bruce discusses driving during the blackout and joining the ATS

3rd November 1921.

Right so what age were you when war started and what were you doing just prior to that?
Well I was, I had left school and I was working at the YMCA and um I had to wait until I as 18 until I could join the ATS. And however I waited another year because I was then engaged with em feeding troops who were working on searchlights all round here. And uh so I did that that year then I joined the ATS and went to Edinburgh and did my training then I went down to Devizes in England and learned all about radar and it was called GL in those days - Gun Laying it was called and I have some books about it right in here, and em then I was kept on there as an instructor for a bit and I got a stripe and I got a second stripe and then I went out on a gun site. There was no radar on it so I was on permanent fatigues. Guard duty forever and forever and went from one site to another you know filling in and then I was told I could go to what was called an OPS school, which was to become an officer and I did Officer Training and I went back into Anti Aircraft onto gun sites and I went all over England and I was never in Scotland. And I ended up in what was called the Diver Belt and that was where they shot down the V1s and the V2s and uh we had to really be on the spot

[noise]

and as that folded up I was sent to London and I took over a whole street in London near I don't know if any of you have been to London but its near Sloane Square, near where they have the em garden big garden festival. And then I got all the girls who had been trained as - working on Anti Aircraft who were having to be retrained so they could fit into different jobs and they told me then that if I stayed on one more year I would be allowed to go abroad and I thought that that would be fun so I signed on for another year and I went out to Italy. And one of the pla… the trips out to Italy was on a train and it was called the Medlocks Special, and uh we stopped in different places in France and Germany on the way to Italy and each place we had to wash and have a meal in one of the places we stopped was called Dom und Dosler and we went to wash and the basins were steel helmets old german steel helmets regulation issue. And then we arrived at an enormous castle Caserta and it was a fantastic place all marble floors and that sort of thing and but it was very regimented it was very tough person in charge and so she said would I like to go to this village outside called Madelone, and I went there and it was much more relaxed and I was on my own, I had just a few girls to look after and I finished up by going to Vienna. And that was when Vienna was split up between the Russians, the French um British and Americans. And we were fed on em Compo sort of rations - and they didn't em regenerate them properly and I put on a terrific amount of weight. But then I came home and I found my father had signed me up in the Territorial Army so that's my - my war.

When you said at the beginning of the war you got involved in the feeding the troops here, what did that involve?
What it was, we had a van owned by the YMCA and they had a big em thermos things of tea, and we had buns and and we has sausages rolls and we drove all round the front where the search lights were and we gave them cups of tea and buns and pies.

And was the blackout on at that time?
Yes.

How did you manage?
We had to drive with em sidelights and then you had to, you had to take a piece out of the engine of the car whenever it was stopped so as to immobilise it. A little tiny bit. And eh it was really difficult driving in the, in the dark.
Had they taken down the signs or covered them up as well?
Yes everything. Everything was down. Yes.

So you had to know exactly where you were going?
Yes. Yes. We had, we thought it was er much more rewarding to do that and to go out to these people who were isolated all over the place out sort of Saline way and in the hills round about there, because one of the vans just went down to the dockyard because the dockyard men were allowed to go home to have some stuff just afterwards and we thought that was rather boring?

Much more dashing going out