‘Mum’s ATS adventures’
Ruth Greenwood recounts her mother Joyce Culpin’s adventures while posted to a US Army camp in Berkshire
During the war my mother was in the ATS – the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She joined the Royal Corps Signals and was posted to York – she came to love the city but not then. The Minster was covered in sandbags and the parade ground a quagmire of deep, squelching mud. The men were stationed on one side of the quagmire and the women on the other. The huts were grouped together with a corridor through the middle and they called it ‘the spider’.
The sergeant came into their hut one night, asking for 23 volunteers for a secret mission. My grandfather had drummed it into my mother to never volunteer for anything in the army. But she hated where they were stationed, so she shot out of bed and was the first to volunteer!
They were driven around England to various army camps, eventually ending up at Sunninghill Park, Ascot, where they were billeted in tents at the side of the racecourse. They were on loan to the US army, attached to the First Allied Airborne Army, who were parachutists.
Some of the bolder girls pointed out that, according to King’s Regulations, ATS personnel should not be housed in tents! Within days, chalet-style huts were being dropped from the sky, lowered by huge cranes onto the park. The girls thought they’d landed on a different planet – curtains at the windows, lino on the floor, sprung mattresses and cotton sheets.
There was a pharmacy, beauty salon and hairdressers on site. The common room had a jukebox and at one end of the room was a coin-operated machine producing doughnuts and ice-cream!
Loud speakers were hung in all the trees round the cookhouse
‘At one end... was a coin-operated machine producing doughnuts and ice-cream’
and when they were in the chow line they could rattle their billy cans and jive to Glen Miller. The beauty parlour was run by a large Cherokee Indian lady with the unfortunate nickname of Porky. It wasn’t open often as she was fond of a tipple and spent many mornings sobering up in the Brig (military prison)! While at Ascot, my mum did spend a night in prison. “One evening I had a pass out of camp to go up to London to see a show with girls from some other camps nearby,” she told me. After the show I caught the train which would get me back to Windsor in time to catch the Liberty Truck back to camp.
“I knew one left Windsor at 11pm but the train ran late so I missed it! Calling the camp switchboard, I spoke to my friend Joy. ‘Don’t worry – catch a train to Slough – the Liberty Truck leaves there at midnight,’ she advised.
“As the train left the station a thick fog descended and by the time we reached Slough – at what felt like a snail’s pace – the truck had already left.
“Stranded, I made my way to the police station and asked the policeman on duty to stamp my pass, which would prove I’d tried to get back to camp. He offered me a bed for the night – in a nice comfy cell!
“The next morning I was woken with a fried breakfast and a big mug of tea before being driven back to camp. As I’d had my pass stamped I didn’t get into trouble.
That morning I was supposed to be on duty – up before reveille to light the fires, clean the kitchen floor and so on. When I didn’t appear, that same friend, Joy, was pulled in to cover. She didn’t speak to me for two weeks! And I couldn’t return the favour as it would mess up the schedules…”
Mum and the other girls would sit around the coke stove in their hut and speculate about what they’d be doing in 20 years, and would the war be over.
They planned to meet up in London under Nelson’s column, but never did, and we still don’t know what the world will be like in 20 years’ time!