大象传媒

This story was submitted by Laura Eastlake of ERskine on behalf of Agnes Hendrie.

I joined the WRAF when I was 18. I tried to join when I was 17 but I went for a medical because I was volunteering and I wasn鈥檛 really old enough to go: my father had to give his permission. In those days I lived in Fife. I鈥檇 been studying on a correspondence course and then took a job at Nairns Linoleum manufacturers. It was with the bombing in London that I decided to join up and I had to go to Edinburgh for the medical. Unfortunately, I had a bad tooth and they wouldn鈥檛 take me until I got the tooth attended to. So I had to go home and get the tooth out. That was about, November/December 1940 and I was called up on the 29th of July 1941. I had to go down to Gloucester and I was going down overnight on the train and in those days the trains were 鈥榩uffy鈥� trains. Oh it was crazy how it all started. The train went off the boil on the way to Edinburgh so by the time I got there I was late. I was getting the train that went to Paddington down the West Coast and we had to change trains at Sheffield in the middle of the night. You couldn鈥檛 even get a drink of water and I was only a young girl. I was only 18 and I was on my own. I remember the last thing my father had said to me was 鈥淣ow if you don鈥檛 like it, you can鈥檛 back out.鈥�

We were late getting to Gloucester. When we got there I suppose we did square bashing and got our uniforms and they were calling up so many WRAFS at the one time that my first cap was a black beret. I was in for a few months before I got the proper cap. I鈥檇 joined up to be trained as a signaller but my eyes didn鈥檛 work quickly enough so I was changed to being a Clerk Special Duties. I was one of the girls you see in the pictures, pushing things about on maps.

I eventually went to a peacetime station called Hornchurch and when we were there we were billeted in the married quarters. We had little houses and we were forever lighting fires because 1941 was a bitterly cold winter. There was no central heating, obviously, and I used to go to bed with my legs down the sleeves of my dressing gown to keep warm. We were there for about 2 years.

If you鈥檙e interested in what we actually did and what our duties were there鈥檚 a wonderful book called 鈥淩eadiness at Dawn鈥� (Victor Gollancz Publishers Ltd.) written by one of the controllers at Hornchurch who was actually an actor and appeared in some of the old war films.

Our daily routine was always changing. We worked on odd shifts: 6-2, 2-10, 10-6. You were either at work or in your bed or going out on the town a wee bit. But with one of the officers being an actor, we often got tickets to the theatre. I think we saw 鈥淩ebecca鈥� and all kinds of things.

It was strange because one of the first days I was on duty was the day Douglas Bader fell in the water. That鈥檚 what we did: we directed the aircraft and also got reports of enemy fighters coming over to this country. But we also tried to direct boats and help to people who were in the channel. We tried very hard to get Douglas Bader but the Germans got him first.

I think I was in Hornchurch for about a year and a half and that was where I met my husband. He was doing the same kind of job as me and they posted him to the Orkneys and me to Dover! When I was down at Dover it was mainly boats and amphibian aircrafts we dealt with down there. We went onboard one of the ships one day and I remember that was the first time I ever saw self-heating tins of Heinz soup. You just pulled the chord and it heated up!

I was on duty the night that D-day happened because we were listening out for the aircrafts shot down in the channel and for the troop ships. Normally when we were on duty we could read or knit or blether or smoke, and that was the first time we weren鈥檛 allowed to do antyhign on duty. Our ears had to be tuned all the time. I remember coming off duty in the morning 鈥� because it started at night 鈥� and being told that we weren鈥檛 allowed to talk to anybody, not even the girls in our barracks, until Churchill had made his speech telling everyone that they鈥檇 gone. So we knew what was happenening because we were part of it in a way. We weren鈥檛 shooting guns but we were doing our best to help those who were out there. If

Oddly, we never felt a hatred for the enemy. This is what I keep saying to the family: we never for one minute dreamt that we wouldn鈥檛 win. It was weird, you just never entertain the thought. We may have been in the forces but we led more or less normal lives. When we were off duty we went out. We couldn鈥檛 shop exactly because we didn鈥檛 have clothing coupons but we could shop for tights and our stockings and handkerchiefs 鈥� everything else was provided for us. But we would go for a meal, go to the pictures and go dancing. WE hated it, especially when we were down in Dover because, if the air raid warning went and sounded twice then that was a shelling warning and you had to take shelter then. Often from Dover you could see them firing the guns on the Calais side of the channel and if you counted 12 and you hadn鈥檛 heard the thump of them landing then you would say 鈥淎-hah, they missed,鈥� and one night we鈥檇 counted 12 and thought they鈥檇 missed and just at that moment they hit the water with a bang. I remember one weekend I鈥檇 gone to London to see my future brother-in-law. We鈥檇 gone to the theatre or gone dancing and when he went back to where he was stationed there鈥檇 been a big air raid and when I went back to Dover, we鈥檇 been hit too and one of the girls on the watch had been killed and one of my friends had damaged her foot which they told her would probably never heal.

We worked in wooden huts beneath three big pylons right on the cliffs. We thought we鈥檇 gone back to the dark ages because we didn鈥檛 have chains that pulled and if we wanted a bath it was an old-fashioned wash boiler and you had to light the flame underneath to heat the water. So we used to go down to Dover and spend ten pence in a hotel and have a bath. That was to begin with. Eventually they moved us further into Dover because of the bombing and we thought this was great because we had running taps and chains that pulled but we hadn鈥檛 been there very long when the first Doodlebugs came over. At first they didn鈥檛 know what it was. They locked us in the barracks and they had men parading round in case the Germans had come over to take us prisoner *Laughs.* And then they moved us underground in Dover castle. I was in the WRAFS but there were also WRENS and ATS in Dover castle and we never knew that there were other people there with us. How they got us in and out I鈥檒l never know: we never saw one another. We all got together at a parade in Dover about ten years ago and we all got to see where the other ones worked and we couldn鈥檛 believe it. We couldn鈥檛 get down into where we used to work because it was still being used to deal with the Cold War up until around ten years ago.

I still keep in touch with many of the friends I made during the war. Some of the ladies I met there stayed in Dover and still live there. One of my friends married a Canadian Wireless operator while we were in Dover. They had a flat in Dover: they lived out and they came over to celebrate their gold wedding anniversary not long ago and they had the same room, in the same building where they got married at first. It鈥檚 a hotel now, you see.

Towards the end of the war it became clear that we were going to win. When the guns stopped we volunteered to go abroad but they wouldn鈥檛 let us. They said we鈥檇 had too much shell shock. Instead we were transferred up to a DeMOB centre in Staffordshire and some of the men who were coming back, I had met on the way out when they were first being send to war.

D-day for me, I don鈥檛 think it was the way people remember it in London. I don鈥檛 think we went quite as wild! After the war I went back to work until my husband got demobbed and then we went to live in Gourock. We were married at the end of the war but that again, is a funny story, because I didn鈥檛 have coupons to buy a wedding dress. I managed to get some lace and a veil but I had to get a wedding cake in Dover and carry it all the way home on the train and I could see it overhead in the luggage rack and all the bits of icing were falling off it! We were married at such short notice. I got a telegram on the Monday and we were getting married on the following Saturday but there was stormy weather and so he didn鈥檛 get home on the boat until Thursday!

So I still try and keep in touch with the friends I made during the war. We might not have been firing the guns but we were very much a part of it: it was our job to help the people who were out there.

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