Memories & Recollections - an interview with Bess Nelson
Bess Nelson worked for the Navy, Army and Air Foce Institutes (NAAFI) from January 1941, shortly after major bombing of both Portsmouth and Daedalus itself. In an interview with Community Consultant Imran Bannister in July 2008, she recounted her experiences of working at Daedalus during the Second World War:
Joining the NAAFI
"On January the 10th 1941 we had the biggest blitz on Portsmouth to date. They were after the dockyard, but they bombed the whole of the centre. I was an omtometer operator, I was 15 or 16, for Timothy, Wrights and Taylors and there was nothing left of that. It was such a dreadful night and we were, eventually, ringed by fire. On the road I lived in, one of the houses at the end was hit. Houses were hit in the next road and people were killed. My brother was on the roof, kicking off what they call Molotov cocktails to prevent…but we still got up and we’d only had, I don’t think we had any sleep at all that night, but I still got on the bike and went down to work. But I only really got to the beginning of the centre and there was no way I could get though. It was just rubble piled high, and so of course I went back home.
A very great man he was, my uncle, who’d been in the trenches actually during the First World War, he told me about NAAFI, but I didn’t know even what it meant, and he said ‘well, their head office is down near the Gosport ferry.’ I’d never been on the ferry and, anyway, I went down and was given an interview and they said ‘I’m sorry, because you’re only 16 you wouldn’t be allowed to serve. Come back when you’re 18’. I had told her about the bombing on Timothy, Wrights and Taylors, why I was looking for a job, and she called me back and she said ‘did you say you were a bookkeeper?’ I wasn’t; it was the beginning of computers, and I said yes. She said ‘well there’s a vacancy at HMS Daedalus in Lee-on-the-Solent’ and I said ‘Well where’s that?’; I’d never even heard of Lee-on-the-Solent. And she explained how to get there’
‘So I found out how to cycle out there, which was about five or six miles, and at the Guardroom they told me where the NAAFI office was and, I still don’t know what made me say it, but when the manager, who became a life-long friend to me, came forward and said “yes Miss, and what do you want?”, I just said “I’m your new bookkeeper”, so I never had an interview for it, I just hoped and I went from there.
Serving at Daedalus
‘Eventually because of the difficulties of bombing and getting to and fro I was allowed to sleep in the dormitory there. It became my home then, it did become my home. The manager and his wife became friends and he gave me away when I was married; it was that sort of friendship. He told me about how bad the bombing had been. He himself was outside and he said he was thrown to the very bottom of these concrete steps. Fortunately he did not sustain any serious injury. But they couldn’t find out how many were killed, because they didn’t even know who would be there at that time. He then told me that people were still coming up to the Guardroom to see if, you know, but they were just blown up to smithereens. After that we did have air raids quite a lot. On one particular occasion our air raid shelter was by the Wardroom mess, but it was quite a stretch to walk across to get there. The NAAFI girls were the only ones allowed to sleep on the base. The WRENS were in the village; they commandeered quite a few of the very lovely houses on the sea front and also this big place where during that bombing the WRENS were killed, and there is a plaque to their memory on Milvil Road just outside of Daedalus. We had one night when we just sat in the dark and I can remember we just sang and sang and sang and gradually, we didn’t have things like watches in those days, you had to be rich to have a watch, and as we came out the shelter we realised it was daylight and someone called out from the Guardroom “Where have you been? The all-clear went at midnight”, we didn’t hear it.
“I stayed there, actually, until around 1948 - after the War…. I had got married in 1944 and after D-Day…but I did remain in quarters until the end of the War. In fact, even after that because my husband didn’t come home until 1946. I did stay on the base until he came home.”
“I can't remember if there was a celebration at the end of the War. I was there. I don’t think there was any celebration. We certainly didn’t have a party, no. I was walking along the sea front and thinking ‘the War’s over, the War’s over’…It was really hard to realise that it was over. They had street parties, by the way, and I went to the street party that was in my home town. Honestly, I don’t know where they got all their rations from! Because we were still rationed in 1952. But certainly the streets celebrated…but I don’t know whether there were any celebrations at the end of the war with Japan. I don’t remember that. There probably were street parties again, but certainly there wasn’t a get-together on the base that I can remember, and I was there seven days a week.
“There was a Canadian girl who flew from across the Atlantic with no radar. She looked as if she was going to sleep. I don’t know where she landed. She must have landed at Daedalus but I don’t know what arrangements were made. I didn’t see her again. I did offer to make her a cup of tea. Arrangements must have been made to take her back to Canada. A very brave girl. Nothing was said about her. Then again, you see, so much was secret. So much we didn’t know. I mean we knew that D-Day was imminent by the amount of Army activity in the High Street of Lee. And also all the shipping, because the night before D-Day I was cycling over to see someone in Portsmouth and you could not see the Isle of Wight for ships. I don’t know how they ever manoeuvred them into position – a fantastic naval feat. And when I cycled back the next morning, nothing at all. All gone. But it must have been very difficult for the first landings because they were trying to sleep in the doorways - the soldiers – of the shops. I can remember two behind a big piece of corrugated iron in a wine shop. They were just sleeping down through the high street and then they were off the next morning to fight. But they couldn’t have had much sleep. I mean how they were rationed for I just don’t know.
“I do know that Lord Montgomery’s mother lived at Lee-on-Solent and we had heard that he had visited, but we didn’t know how true that was…I can’t ever remember seeing his mother either. And of course, as you know, they planned D-Day as Southwick House, didn’t they. On the Portsdown Hill. So I imagine he must have paid a visit to his mother on that occasion. But like so much during the War we were kept [in the dark]…I think it was called the Lancastria, I’m not terribly sure. And that one was one of the worst naval disasters of the War. I think it was off of France...St Nazaire. Long after the War we did go and camp with a tent we had and on the camp site somebody was there who wanted to visit the memorial. I think it was St Nazaire, because he was on the Lancastria. He was only very young, eighteen, and he realised he was walking on the hull of the ship. There were thousands went down. And Churchill would not have it announced because at the time we were in a very bad way. So we went to the memorial and the people that had been able to be buried, oh it’s so beautifully kept, and he found one of his friends. He found one of his friends. There were very few survivors.
“But then, of course, we suffered the Doodlebugs. And one had come right over but it landed at Stubbington and I don’t know how many but I imagine there were some deaths. I think it landed near the square
Family reunion
“After D-Day, this should be, I think, 1945 probably, when the prisoner of war camps were being liberated some of them were being flown into Daedalus and we were told that they were coming in at the rate of two thousand a day. And the NAAVI would give them cigarettes and chocolate, and there was no question of payment. Although it wasn’t my job, because I was in the office, I asked permission, could I go and serve some time during the day whenever I could find the time to see if we could find out what had happened to my brother. I went there on one occasion and I said ‘Does anyone know a Flight Sergeant Edward Richardson? In a Lancaster bomber’ and this man, some of them had sailors uniforms on, I can remember that, I don’t know how they were kitted up but they did have some uniform, and he was leaning up against the NAAFI wall and he said ‘Was he a grocer’s boy from a grocery shop in Stancham’, I said ‘He WAS’. And he said words to the effect ‘Did you expect him to survive?’. But he did. I just happened to speak to the right group.”
