"I Won't Be Long Dear"

I left school at 14 and the very next day I was in service at Mompesson House for 21/2 years then I went to the lower end of St Anne Street and did the same job there for 2 years. Working in the Close (Salisbury Cathedral Close) and living so near I was able to have my days out. It was quite nice really.

During the war I was a scullery maid and it was all stone flags, the passages and everything I used to have to scrub them. In October we used to get the men come for the pheasant shoots. They used to have a room right opposite my toilet and I used to creep up there. Miss Gertrude and Miss Beatrice Teddington run the house then.

My husband was called up on the 2nd September — he volunteered. He said “I won’t be long dear” because we hadn’t been married for very long. “I’ll be home” — a fortnights time he was over in France and I didn’t see him for 6 years! We managed all right. I’d had a child in 1938 and another in 1939 when he was away.

When my husband was in France — he was at Lille. He went into a restaurant to have a cup of tea, or a café or whatever and he saw a newspaper there. So he picked it up and what did he see? The death of his brother. That’s how he come to know that his brother had died. Very sad.

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