Ida Barfoot – Civilian, Metropolitan Police and ATS
“ I went to boarding school in Putney and had lived a very sheltered life in
my early years. I was I suppose quite a nervous, quiet girl, and not really a
good mixer. I found a job in the payroll and accounts department of the
Metropolitan Police at the old Scotland Yard, and I really enjoyed that. I
was there and settled when the war started, and because it was made a
reserved occupation, I kept on doing that for the first two years of the war.
But then the reserved status of my job was removed and I was conscripted
into the Army. I really didn’t want to leave my police job and do the same
thing in the Army. I mean, it seemed rather pointless given that somebody
then had to be moved to cover the job that I’d left behind in the Police,
but that’s the way it was, and that’s what I had to do. It was quite
traumatic really – for a shy, nervous type it would be, and I really didn’t
enjoy Army life. The Army had evidently decided that I belonged to them,
and that I was a resource to be used, the Army way. It played on my
nerves and my health suffered, and the hard won confidence that I had
built during my time with the police all went. The only good bit about it
was that I was still working in payroll and accounts, only this time it was
paying soldiers instead of policemen. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do my
bit for the war effort; I did. It was just that I would much rather have done
it with the police where I knew I was useful and that I did a good job. Its
only recently with all the talk of what women did during those war years
that I ’ve actually come to understand that what I did was of some value
and that I did play my part in winning the war, however small it might
have been. It is quite interesting to look back now, as an older woman
and realise that my efforts in part, helped create the world that we have
today. I don’t necessarily think its all good mind, but at least people have
choice and girls, women have more opportunity than we did back when
we were their age.”