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RENE ADAMSON (nee WARDLE)
WOMEN’S AUXILLARY AIR FORCE

Born in High Lands, near Cockfield, Rene had two brother and two sisters. Her father owned Low Butterknowle Colliery and worked shifts in the pit. After school she worked in domestic service for a family who owned mills in Bradford.

At the age of twenty, I volunteered for the WAAF and when interviewed and asked for my preference, I said motor transport, but somehow ended up in catering. I joined at Insworth, Gloucester and did my initial training in Morecambe, then was sent to Barnoldswick, near Skipton. Here I was taught ‘cooking and butchering’, along with 14 others, at the new technical college. I was stationed with a private family and the man of the house worked for the nearby Rolls Royce plant. On completing the course we had to do a trade test and were accordingly posted from there. The fourteen others were sent to Kirkham, near Blackpool and I was sent off on my own, having got my first promotion on passing out, from Aircraft Woman 2nd Class to Leading Aircraft Woman.

I was posted on New Year’s Eve 1942 to Dollar in Clackmaningshire, to a very remote radiolocation station. After ten days, five of which were taken up booking in, there was a note on my bed to report to Headquarters as I had been sent to the wrong place ~ 78 wing, instead of 72! So it was back on the train to Ashburton in Devon, near Buckfast Abbey, then seconded to Lizard Point in Cornwall.

Real work started in April 1943, when I got a compassionate posting to Middleton St. George as my mother was not well. Here I was with the 6th Group Bomber Command of the RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) ~ other stations in the Group being Topcliffe (the HQ), Dishforth, Leeming, Linton-on-Ouse and Wombleton. We were 95% Canadians and 5% RAF (Royal Air Force). Here I was made a Corporal, a position I kept until 1946 when I was posted back to the RAF when the Canadians were repatriated.

The WAAF billets were especially built wooden huts and were separate from the men’s. The NCO’s (Non Commissioned Officers) had ‘quarters’ and officers had ‘rooms’. We had bicycles and would cycle home through Ingleton. We worked shifts to prepare meals for 400 ~ breakfast, lunch and a cooked meal at 5 pm ~ or 7 pm for aircrew. This was during the 1943 bombing raids ~ Halifax bombers were flying out of the station at first, going to Dresden and Dusseldorf, then it was Lancaster bombers. There were good and bad times and you had to dwell on the good ones. You couldn’t make friends as they were here today and gone tomorrow ~ 20-year-old boys! One night seven aircraft were lost ~ 49 good men gone!

I would put up the rations for the pilots ~ a flask of black coffee, a tin of’ ’Treesweet’ orange, chewing gum and laxative chocolate. They had to have bacon and eggs before flying and also after having been de-briefed on their return ~ it had been proved that if brought down in the North Sea they could survive longer on this than a seven-course meal.

There were parties once a month and they would put 1s. 6d. away regularly towards these. I would help prepare fresh salmons and York hams, which farmers would bring in sacks. We would receive a barrow load of live lobsters, which were put on trays in huge steamers and you had to crack and dress them. We learnt how to pipe butter cream for decoration. The Canadians brought ice cream making machines with them and introduced us to coleslaw. They would like pancakes, maple syrup and bacon altogether for breakfast. Normal cooking included roasts, chickens and fish.

Socially there were dances and ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) concerts. The ‘Squadronairs’ was one band I remember. There were also the NAFFI and tea bars which were a meeting place for the opposite sex, as you couldn’t take men into the huts.

Towards the end of 1944 I was transferred to RCAF Wombleton, near Helmsley. I remember a trip from here to Scarborough, as the liberty truck was going, and there were 30 of us in it. I remember being bombed and lost a few of the WAAFs. Then I went to Insworth, in Gloucester with 1,000 to cater for. This was a holding unit for RAF personnel who had been in India for several years. They also had to take a contingent of Jamacian volunteers, who were very popular with the local girls. We had to cook different food for them and they had special allocations of rum, sugar and roast potatoes. I ended up promoted to Sergeant in this posting.

Rene was demobbed in October 1946. She married her husband, Norman and brought up her family. She has worked at Glaxo and taken the helm of the local RAF Wings Association, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Glaxo Retired Staff Association.

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