Baker , Alice G , b c 1923 , née Rigden

Born, c1923; volunteered for the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) at Tunbridge Wells, Kent, 1940; basic training at Guildford; posted to the Records Office at Winchester; moved to Bournemouth; the work included writing up secret war diaries; posted to London to study for six months at Regent Street Polytechnic, 1942; kept apart from the civilian students; taught in the electrical and radio workshops; sent to Gainsborough for the final stages of training, including learning how to search for signals which could be relayed to guns and to calibrate the information; posted to Charminster, working in the radio workshops and on the gun sites; posted to various workshops around England, eventually at Kippings Cross near Pembury, Kent; discharged, 1946; married P R Baker.

The Schools of Engineering at Regent Street Polytechnic were used between 1940 and 1945 for training technicians in various disciplines for the army, navy and air force. Departmental laboratories were used under a double-shift system, and several thousand personnel were trained over the period. Civilian day courses were maintained, but with a restricted number of students, and evening courses were discontinued until the end of the war.