Special gas masks at the telephone exchange

this contribution was submitted by Frances Griffiths to the People's War team in Wales and is added to the site with her permission.

I worked in the telephone exchange in Newport, South Wales. All the telephonists had to have a special gas mask with very thin rimmed glasses and special adaptions so they could work, should the need arise, wearing these specially adapted gas masks. And they had to practice for half an hour a week, or a month, and I used to see them working with these gas masks on and I used to think: “I wonder what’ll happen to me.” Because I hadn’t started there till 1942 and I was so junior they never issued me with a gas mask, not a special one..But fortunately the need didn’t arise.

My sister, Eva, joined the Land Army at the age of 15 in 1944, quite illegally. And they kept saying: “Bring your ration book” — she couldn’t afford to take her ration book because it was a blue child’s book, and of course they would have known straight away that she wasn’t old enough to be in the Land Army! But she got away with it…even Vi, who worked with her didn’t know she was so young.

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