14 Young Ladies at War: England, World War Two

In my World War II job of guard on General Eisenhower (when in London) and at his War Room, I worked from midnight to eight in the morning. I had with the other two guards handling the other shifts an apartment at 8 Lancaster Road, a very nice top floor place where we three had each a bedroom and the place had previously belonged to socially high persons. But no English person wanted a top floor apartment as in the Nazi bombing, most deaths occurred there.

We three sailors liked one another and were all nineteen years of age and two years into the U. S. Navy, Seamen First Class but assigned to the Army to guard Ike as ‘Fleet Marines’.

We three were free of duty for a Saturday, and left the Embassy jubilantly with our pay, paid once a month with “subsistence allowance” which paid for our food and apartment.

When we exited the back door of the Embassy, it was about ten PM, very dark with the blackout, and as usual, rain was heavy and persistant. So we split the cost of a taxi for the short trip. As we turned toward our apartment, the cab driver said, “Look over yonder under that marquee!” We looked and there were seven young attractive women trying to get out of the rain. My buddy Roy Clarke said, “Pull over, driver , and drop us off!” “Yeh!” said Larry Donovan, my other roommate. We paid the cabby and turned to the soaked and bedraggled “ATS” Girls, in their brown serge British army uniforms. They were drivers for the upper echelon British army officers.

We invited them to ‘tea’ at our apartment, and they eagerly accepted, we ten rushing through the rain for the remaining two blocks to our apartment.

Once inside and up the five floors to our elegant home, the girls oohed and ahed over our comfort and luxury.

We fixed a dinner with real meat from the PX and had real milk for them to drink and some delicacies. We made each of them a present of several packs of cigarettes which cost us 50 cents a carton, unfindable in Britain.

They and we all smoked.

They relaxed, and gave their histories: Agnes was from Scotland, had a burr in her voice, and we laughed at her accent. Her Dad was a crofter who raised sheep in the highlands.

Bernice, a very thin and pretty Bernice, was an aristocratic daughter of an MP, equivalent to a Senator’s daughter in the U.S.