Guiding Memories | "The G.I.S. and Me" Page 9

"The G.I.S. and Me"

Page 9

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to play the 'King's Breakfast'. We thought thee butte? might intrigue, and began with a few camp-fire songs that went down rather well! Someone told a story, and someone else did something else - I can't remember what, but we finished up with some good, old-fashioned songs and these nearly brought the house down. They all joined in and when we had to 'pompom' except for the first verse or two, they seemed to remember the words. Anyway, we made plenty of noise and they loved it!

Back in London, we did various jobs at Headquarters - clerical and otherwise - in between driving practice in various Army vehicles. The weather was lovely; some of us spent one afternoon sitting around on vehicles in Belgrave Square listening to the election results coming through on the radio. The driving was rather a hair-raising business for those of us who didn't know London very well, but we survived. I was sent home for a spell and told to swat Modern Greek, for in all probability I would be going to join the Greek team.

This team was the first to go, and had quietly slipped away almost unobserved just before D-Day. It was lead by Margaret Pilkington of Lancashire, and consisted of nine women and three Scouters. The powers that be had insisted that men should be attached to teams - in many cases these were Scouts - but that is another story! There was a civil war going on part of the time they were there, and Margaret was given the MBE on her return to England for work that the team had done in the way of exchanging hostages.

The second team to depart was a mobile hospital of 80 beds, with a pathological unit. This team followed the troops into Holland, and did wonderful work fighting the Typhoid epidemic, but again that is another story. Doctors were difficult to spare, but Dr Meredith Ross was given leave to come from Australia as leader of the team, and so they were allowed the two doctors that they needed.

In another change of plan, I was to go to Germany instead of Greece, so I swapped my Greek dictionary for a German one and hoped for the best.

Equipment was being requested for schools and nursery schools, and I went to talk to my old school - Polam Hall in Darlington. They gave me so much wonderful equipment that when I eventually set sail, I was allowed another trunk hoping that the transport people would wink at it. (Either they did, or they thought they were seeing double, having had one over the eight!)

There was only one more test for Alicia and me to do - we hadn't yet done any light-weight camping, so we set off one morning on a lovely day to spend a night in the paddock of our County Camp Advisor, Miss Watson. This was at Norton village near Stockton-on-Tees, and was quite a little distance from Darlington, so we polished up our bicycles, packed up our rucksacks, and prepared ourselves for the fray! We hoped to look a little younger than we were, but as we passed a small boy sitting on a gate, he shouted; "What? Grannies going 'ling!" How we laughed!

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