A charming reminder

Eileen Walsh (neé) Belgrove will reach the age of 81 this year, but as a 15-year-old girl back in 1945 she joined her sister Maisie and her friends in the Girl’s Training Corp (GTC).

The National Association of Training Corps for Girls was formed in 1940 and was the umbrella organisation for the GTC, Girl’s Nautical Training Corp (GNTC) and Women’s Junior Air Corp (WJAC). In 1964, the GTC and WJAC amalgamated to become the Girl’s Venture Corp.

In effect the GTC was in the war time equivalent for today’s Territorial Army with members being eligible for call-up to full active service after they reached the age of 17.

But, for the youthful Eileen, who hailed from Barnewall Place in the Waterside, joining the GTC was a matter of being told by her sister ‘come and join, its good fun.’

Whilst Eileen’s sister had been in the organisation for a considerable period, Eileen said “I was only in a few months before the war ended. The picture was taken along the quay.”

In fact Eileen was able to fondly name every single person pictured and recalled how the training for the GTC took place at the Britannia Hall in the city.

By virtue of the photograph its easy to see that the GTC in Londonderry was very well attended and Eileen said that drills and exercise were taken very seriously, but that she preferred going to the dances at the Britannia and Victoria Halls’!

“It was a shilling to get in and there was a dance nearly every night of the week. I remember the first night I went, I put my Sunday dress on, but the doorman didn’t believe I was 14, he made me go home and get my birth certificate,” she said.

Eileen attended Rossdowney Primary School and left at 14. Whilst she would have preferred to stay at school, like most young women in the city economic necessity saw her land at the door of Welch Margetson’s shirt factory where she became a front stitcher.

“My mum took me to the factory for a job and the manager there didn’t believe I was 14 either, he told my mother take me home because he thought I was only 10.”

Eileen continued to work after she married her husband James who she later found out was in the Air Training Corp as a teenager during WWII.The couple have two children, Robert and Paul.

We asked Eileen which she preferred those days or now and she said: “I have fond memories of those days, but I have a great life now.”