Name: Barbara

You weren’t in the forces, were you?

I worked for the BBC – a reserved occupation. The boys who had done the work before joined up and the girls took over. My duties were secretarial at first then there was not enough to do so I joined the programme engineering section and had extensive training as an electrical engineer, but we were not allowed to touch the equipment ourselves; if anything went wrong we had to call a controller. I was with the BBC for 4 years, two years as an engineer.

Where were you on VE day?

200 Oxford Street, on the corner of Great Portland Street, Peter Robinson’s Department store, which the BBC took over for studios. They had studios at certain levels below ground, some below tube level. That’s where I did my job working with Big Ben, not a very popular job. We were assigned to 4 hour shifts playing records of Big Ben. In 1943/4 air raids and V1’s and V2’s risked damaging Big Ben and live sound was replaced by a recording, a very large record, 33 1/3 r.p.m. Every quarter of an hour I had to play this wretched thing. You had to get it absolutely right. There was no time in between to do anything, so we just had to sit there and wait. When I was on duty a cat expecting a litter of kittens decided to deliver them during my shift but I kept playing my recordings.

How did you hear the news that the war had ended?

I was in the BBC! What else could you do?

Have you had any contact with German people since?

No, although my mother and father went to live in Brittany in about 1960. Of course, German people used to come over for their summer holidays and my father as an ex-soldier found it a little bit odd to see the Germans walking around.

What do you think of Twinning?

Sounds a good thing, but never had anything to do with it. Don’t forget my parents lived in France and I used to go there quite a bit to see them.