Telephone operator, Second World War : Marjory Chapman

Transcript

Well I was hunting around for jobs and an aunt of mine said 'do you know, the GPO are advertising for telephonists, why don't you try' and I said 'oh I don't know' and she said 'yes I think you'd do very well'. So I applied and I was accepted. I was at Willesden Exchange to start with and it was only a small exchange and we had to do everything there because there was only two of us I think. And we would help one another and we'd take messages as well; and then shortly after that the war broke out, and then they wanted telephonists up in London and I was picked to go there. I never looked back after that. When we first went up to Faraday Buildings they just had shells of concrete walls for the girls to stay in and the water was running down the walls. Well it was either that stay or go home through the air raids. I often went home because I preferred (it). They had quite a hard time these girls because if somebody didn't turn up there was always somebody to jump in immediately. There was no question of leaving anything unturned you know. We had gas masks and we had fire watching as well. We had to do fire watching at home and fire watching up there and there weren't enough of the men to go round so we used to do night duties as well. All you were concerned with was getting on with your job and seeing that everybody got what they wanted as best you could. Norman Widsom was one of the telephonists with us at the time. He was a night telephonist and we used to sit on the switchboard and he used to tell us stories about what he'd done. He was very keen on horse riding. It wasn't all that busy at night, but you had to be there you see.