Marge Arbury was born in Cobham and at 19 years old she joined up to serve her country.  She completed three weeks of initial training at a training camp in Guildford, where she found out she was very good at Morse code, and because of this was selected to be a wireless operator. She was sent to the Isle of Man to be a Y operator. When she arrived she was required to sign the Official Secrets Act, Marge recalls that one person was sent home, as she had a German grandmother so wouldn’t be eligible for the role. She remembers the six months on the Isle of Man, learning how to understand Morse code, getting her ready for her new role as a wireless operator. In October 1943, she was sent to Harrogate, Forestmore, where she started to decipher German enigma messages. Marge never expected that she would be a spy when she first joined up, she thought she would be driving lorries! Her role as a wireless operator involved going through transmissions trying to find hidden Morse code messages.  She was responsible for covering messages coming out of Yugoslavia, from the German Army, Navy, and the Gestapo. All of the messages were passed on by motorbike to Station X, also known as Bletchley park. Whilst stationed in Harrogate, due to the secrecy of the role, people thought she wasn’t contributing anything, and townspeople didn’t treat her well. This couldn’t be further from the actual truth and the important work she was working. Marge stayed with the Y service until the very end of the war and was eventually demobbed in October 1946.

Don McArthur recounts how his D Day parachute drop went awry, trapping him behind enemy lines with no supplies and causing him to spend ten months as a prisoner of war. During D Day Don had suspected that his given orders were flawed but the extreme camaraderie he had experienced in the Parachute Regiment prevented him from trusting his doubt and confusion.   Tasked with delivering mortars to a rendezvous point, Don and his platoon were dropped into Normandy on a dark, rainy night with no way to distinguish where to land or where to move towards. Despite the conditions he was able to locate three more of the lost Paras but no maps had been given out so following the noise of explosions was now their only option. After ten days of wandering the empty countryside with no supplies and no enemy or ally contact they were discovered by German soldiers and Don was captured.   Don found the prison camp’s staff strict and quick to anger but he couldn’t blame them for just doing their job and didn’t resist their interrogations due to how worn out he was. After having been released one month after World War 2 ended, the Parachute Regiment asked him to return to their ranks but Don instead chose to go live with his wife and infant child.        

Mary Soames OBE delivers a vibrant account of her journey from an ambulance driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANYs) to a colonel in the British Army. She recounts with fondness the memories and occasional challenges that emerged throughout her twenty-six-year career which witnessed the entirety of the Second World War. Initially driving converted bread vans as ambulances at Royal Albert Docks following the outbreak of war, Mary moved to a more senior and administrative role at Streatham Common. As she progressed through her career, Mary undertook more senior roles and responsibilities in a variety of locations and shares the stories she collected along the way, including brief affiliations with the intelligence corps, tales of the Blitz, and interactions with Royal Family members. Mary joined the army in 1942, where she was commissioned as a colonel and remained in this position until her marriage in 1964. Mary’s story reflects some of the struggles that women faced in positions of military authority. Nonetheless, her pride at being a member of FANY and admiration for the remarkable organisation are illuminated throughout her account. Her career was one of remarkable growth and was made all the more commendable with her roles as life vice-president of WRAC Association and chairman of the Benevolent Fund.   The publication of this previously unseen interview was made possible thanks to a grant from The Gerry Holdsworth Special Forces Charity, to mark 80 years since the closure of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in January 1946.