Jean Barry

As well as living in Southampton I’ve also explored the history of the City through work that I have done from the late 1970’s onwards. After doing a course in Media, women’s history and politics, I took a job working on the Art History of Women from Southampton in WW1. I then went on to take part in the study of the history of Millbrook and spent a year cataloguing pictures of Naval Ships for the Merchant Navy at the Juliet House Museum.

One of the best memories I have of my life in Southampton was being in the Terriers (Territorial Army) for five years from 1946-1951. I was a Heavy Anti-Aircraft driver and we used to train two evenings a week and also have training trips away. One of the things that attracted me to the Terriers was free driving lessons, as I wouldn’t have been able to afford driving lessons on my own.

I remember on our training weekends that men and women used to be segregated into separate parts of the camp. On one of our most memorable trips lots of the girls were getting sick and passing out and no one knew why. It was then discovered that the cooks were trainees and the food was terrible, so the girls hadn’t been eating and were passing out because of malnutrition. I didn’t have that problem as I was a driver and could go into the town for supplies!