Lady Bruce discusses officer training

So how did you earn your stripes, was that just natural talent …?
I suppose so. Yes. Out of each intake there was so many chosen to stay behind and be instructors so I was just one of many. We had a drill competition which we happened to have won.
Good.

So what sort of drill competition…?
It, what we did was, we learnt it all by numbers so it looked like we were very professioned because the, the sergeant was the instructor just gave us the first order and we came up to attention and knew how many paces we were going to walk when we were going to halt, we were going to put our hands out and do. Any of you do cadet or anything?

And to have so little money I can't remember when I joined I think it was eight and sixpence in the old money, I don't know what that would be now em and so it was just meant that on your day off you could go down and have a cup of tea and something and go to the pictures on the bus back and forward and that was it. And eh you weren't allowed out without a pass and eh this particular gun site we were on was a very good fish and chip shop. And so we used to sneak out the back through the wire fence there was around and get fish and chips and this stupid girl clutched it you know to her uniform and got grease all over, so we were found out and when I went to a thing called pre OPS School that was before you were selected to be an officer if you were good enough to be an officer and they made you scrape the floor with razor blades you know to get it really clean and they had these buckets, dirty old galvanised buckets em with sand in them for fire drill and stuff and the sergeant major came in and said right girls she said my recruits have given me a gleaming bucket this morning and I expect yours to be the same in the morning. And so we thought no way could we get this bucket. So I said we'll go down and buy a brand new bucket as they we very cheap and we'll polish it all up even if we were doing it all night and we'll just stand it there and she what she says. So we did. I've never seen anybody so, you know, that mouth sort of dropping look, at this thing, so I think it gave us brownie points.

That would do yeah.

So what did eight and six buy in those days?
Well that's, that bought you em, you had to save half a crown, now shillings two and six. It bought you bus fare down to the local town, the cinema cos it was only ninepence to go to the cinema in those days and eh tea, high tea and that and your post postage home that was about it, you couldn't save any money.

So what was the 2 and 6 you had to save, what was that for?
It was compulsory savings.

And did you get that back at the end of the war or what was that for? Pensions?
Yes. Yes. Yes. But even when I was an officer at the end of war we were paid by the month and I got er 23 pounds an month. That was quite a lot in those days.

Quite a decent wage.