The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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263012 Pte. Gwenneth Pauline Lawrence Auxiliary Territorial Service My mum, Gwen Lawrence was 14 when the second world war broke it. Her mother wanted her to be evacuated to Canada but she refused to go. My grandmother lived in a pub in Portsmouth and the city was badly bombed. My mum was worried that the war would be over before she could enlist and do her bit. So as soon as she turned 16 yrs she and a friend tried to join the land army and the WAAF, but both wanted to see your birth certificate. The ATS, however, was desperate for young women to join up and didn't request to see a birth certificate. So two weeks after my mum's 16th birthday she persuaded her mother to sign the necessary papers for her to join up. She and her friend went to Droitwich initially to the ATS Training Centre and then mum trained as a plotter. She worked at RAF Uxbridge, relaying the plots from the RAF to the ack-ack guns and she was there during the invasion of Europe on 6th of June 1944. Soon after this mum was sent to Naples, Italy a long journey by ship and it was while she was there that the end of the war was proclaimed. Obviously not everyone could be sent back to the UK at the same time. Mum was sent on a music course in Florence just to pass the time while waiting for demob. She was billeted in a hotel which is still there now. When she entered the hotel there was a man sitting in the reception area who was playing the piano. He made sure he sat next to my mum during the course and they soon became more than friends. This man was Maurice White, and after the war they returned to the UK and were married in February 1947. They were together for 65 years before Dad died in 2012 and then Mum in 2013. Add to this record.  Related Content: Auxiliary Territorial Service RAF Uxbridge D Day and the Battle of Normandy Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.