An Army Cook

I was born in Haverton Hill, I’m the 2nd eldest of 10 children, and from the age of 14 I was worked in the hospitals, in the kitchens, I was dying to be a cook. When I was 17 my father died, I came home for a month and couldn’t cope with being away. Unbeknown to my mother I filled an advert in, in the paper “The Army Needs You,” and I didn’t tell her, and on the Sunday night she said “in the morning, I want you to do this and that coz I was looking after the kiddies, the baby was only one month old, and I said “I can’t do that, I’ve had this letter,” but I didn’t tell her I’d already applied, so she blew her top. I had to report to Middleton railway station at eight o’ clock with a dressing gown and a pair of slippers and my insurance number and she really went spare! At the time she was taking two children to the nursery at 7 in the morning and going to the shipyard till 5 o’clock at night, picking the two little ones (2 months old and two year old) and bringing them home and looking after the other six or seven, so she wasn’t very happy. The only thing she said was “don’t bring any trouble here,” and I didn’t know what she meant, I thought she meant stealing, coz we didn’t know anything, we weren’t taught anything about babies or sex or anything. I got to York and at first I didn’t like it, so I wrote and told her, and in the second week I wrote and said it was alright, but she wrote a nice little letter, “Dear Ivy, you’ve made your bed, lie in it – Mam.” So I thought, you’re on your own now, get on with it. Anyhow, we were alright eventually, so after training at York I went to a very impressive armistice day parade, we paraded down to the Minster with the bands and the uniforms and I was a raw recruit, I’ve joined in September, this was only the November, I thought we’d won it was so smart. After training I was sent to Chilwell in Nottingham, it was massive, it was like a town on it’s own, I loved it, there was a huge kitchen and all the recipes there were for 100 men, everything you got was for 100 men. At one stage we made our own bread buns, we had to get the soldiers to lift four sacks of flour onto big steel tables, put yeast in the middle and we just made the bread on the table top, let it rise on the table and then make it into buns, stick it into trays in the Bakers ovens, it was fantastic, we had everything. Then after 12 months they decided they wanted to make a kitchen at Raby castle in Staindrop near Darlington, so they sent six of us and there was already 100 men in the camp, and it was what they called the 30VR Raby repair depot, all the vehicles came in to get serviced, repaired and checked out. So we had a continuous flow of vehicles of all sizes, motorbikes, vans, lorries, everything. At the time, Lord Barnard, apparently said he wouldn’t let the MOD build on the land so we had to live in the castle. So we went to Staindrop for our drinking sessions but when we came back there was a huge sideboard full of nuts and fruits and we used to help ourselves, but the butler used to chase us away. But the gardener was very nice to us, he used to take us around the greenhouses, and when you went home on leave he used to give you a bunch of flowers, and that was where I saw my first green figs, growing, and he gave us them. But the only thing, there was no cooking utensils but we had soya boilers, they were like a gas boiler with a sort of body inside that you lifted out with two hoops, filled it with water, and lit a fire underneath it; this was in the coach house, but the floor was uneven where the coaches had run over it, so when we opened a tin of corned beef we used to get the soldiers to open the ends of the tin so it was smooth, greased them inside and they became our sponge pudding tins. There was nothing about hygiene, you used your margarine paper over the top. After about an hour you’d get 24 portions of sponge pudding, bread and butter pudding, treacle pudding, chocolate. We had many different varieties and enjoyed it a lot, but eventually they built accommodation blocks for the people they brought in. They built a kitchen and accommodation for the girls so we had a full camp in no time. That’s where I met my husband. So after about 6 months, we decided we’d get married, but he hadn’t even asked me, then the telegram came and said “can you get leave, I’m on leave,” and the CO called me to the office, and she said “this is arrived, what are you going to do?” I said I didn’t know. She said there’s only marriage leave or compassionate leave allowed, shall I wire him to that effect? He wired back, wedding arranged, December 16th, so I got leave for a fortnight, went home on the Thursday and told me mam, I’m getting married on Saturday, she said “you’re pregnant,” I said “I’m not!” But I’d never been to London before and when I got on the underground, I managed ok to kings cross, and a soldier took me to Waterloo, I got used to the escalators so when I got to the concrete ones he said “come on, these don’t move.” We were married 28 years, three kids. When I first met him, he said “are you going to teach me to dance, I said” on your bike. But he wore me down and was a marvellous tango dancer. I ended up cooking him his supper in the army kitchen. When we got married we did an exhibition tango in Salisbury legion club! I wanted to curl up and die. But I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the army, it makes you grow up, it was hard, the winters were terrible. But we did thousands of meals. We were told very little about what was actually going on during the war, I learned more since, but at one session we had a continuous group of vehicles and you’d end up cooking for the drivers who were taking the vehicles. Nobody told you what was on, but they were American, everybody’s. It was quite amusing, because there was one group making sandwiches, but when you’re making 1200 packed meals you don’t start buttering one slice at a time, , you cover a table with bread, you put a couple of pounds of margarine in a big bowl, you melted it, you had a whitewash brush, and you went along the bread with the melted margarine and there was someone with a tray of meat of sliced cheese, so they’d do one line and an empty line. So someone at the end would pick one of each and an apple and a bar of chocolate to go in a little bag, they were gathered up and put on a tray until you did another hundred. You couldn’t possibly butter sandwiches for two or three hundred men. But I’ve been cooking ever since! I really enjoyed my life.

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