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My mother, Kathleen Bousfield, was born in 1920 in Stepney. When the war started she got an office job at the War Office.

A possibly forgotten thing is that one of the problems she and the other young women encountered during the war was the lack of sanitary protection. At the War office they were lucky though, the commissionaire would give the girls a nod and just quietly say "so and so the chemists got some in"

But, turning to the Red Teddy Bear. When my uncle Jimmy was hot down over Malta my grandparents could not take any more of London. Mum managed to get a transfer to Burton on Trent to work as a clerk in a depot which among other things stocked material for army uniforms.(Co-incidentally this depot used to be the Crosse and Blackwell factory where her father had gone to work as a cooper in the early 1920s).

One of the many fundraising events held inBurton was a dress the teddy bear competition. Mum, who was a good needlewoman, scratched her brains and decided to make a guardsman. Trousres, shoes and bearskin hat were easy enough. BUt she needed some red material for the jacket. She scoured Burton but could find nothing. Eventually one of th eold sergeants at the depot who she knew suggetsed she ask for a bit of the proper guards uniform that they stocked at the depot. She did ask one of the store room staff and he kindly gave her some. But that day turned out to be one of the days when there was a full search of everyone as they left the depot. She was terrified that she would be caught smuggling out "top secret" red guards uniform. Needless to say she got away with it, and her teddy won second prize.

Going back to my uncle Jimmy, he was an innocent, good catholic boy with elderly parents. He was calle dup in 1920, never having slept away from home at all. When he first came home on leave he couldn't wait to get my mother alone to talk to her. He had been terrified in the barracks, not only atthe language of the other recruits, but to hear all the talk of sex. At 18 he still had no idea about the basics, parents hadn't told him and he dare not ask them. Mum, all of 20, taold him as nicely as possible what she knew. Hard to believe today

One final point. My dad John (Jack) Plant drove atank and won the military medal when he took over command of a platoon when the captain was killed. However, he always said that the most improtant job he did in the war (landing in France 10 days after D-Day and going up through to Hanover) was to make sure the tank always had a bottle of spirits of some form to keep them going through the night, begged, borrowed or stolen.

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