It is with great sadness that one very special Resident at the
Westbury residential and nursing care home, in Wiltshire, has sadly passed away.
Audrey Wylie, who was born in 1924, sadly passed away on 2nd July 2021. Audrey made a request to her son Steve to pass on a snippet of her memoir to the staff at The Westbury when she passes.
In her memoir she shares her experience of the war as a young lady, in the midst of starting her first job.
Annaliese Watts, Home Administrator, commented, “We thought it would be a nice tribute to Audrey, and for people reading her memoir to recognise the events she endured during these times and to share her thoughts on her experience.”
So, without further ado, an extract from the memoir of Audrey Wylie with a special thank you to Steve Wylie:
At the time of the November 1940 daylight raid on Southampton I was working in my first job as a Shorthand-Typist after leaving Gregg’s Secretarial College. I was employed by the General Accident, Fire & Life Insurance Company, at their offices in Cumberland Place, on the other side of the Parks, opposite the Art Gallery.
At that time daylight raids on the coast were becoming increasingly frequent, and it was almost a daily ritual that after about half an hour’s work in the morning or afternoon, the sirens would wail and the clerks would hurry down to the vaults to deposit their ledgers and we would all collect up our belongings, not forgetting our knitting, and troop down to the surface shelter at the end of the garden at the rear of our offices. There we girls would sit and chat and knit, or in my case embroider while saying a few silent prayers, while the men, being much too brave for such things, stayed outside watching the dog-fights overhead between the British and German planes.