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Story - Part 1.....

In 1940 women aged between 20 and 22 were conscripted if unmarried, or married without children. If unmarried they were usually placed in the Armed Forces.

These are some of the memories of Eileen Parsons (then unmarried) WAAF - Clerk Accountant on joining and later re-mustered to WAAF Police, SIB. Service Number 443014.

1940 - I leave my home town, Hastings, Sussex, to report to Reading, Berkshire, never having travelled beyond Sussex before. Said goodbye to Dad and Mum. Mum and I shed a tear, both of us wondering what was going to happen to me.

Arrived at Reception Point, Reading, where I joined nine other girls (we all looked lost and forlorn). Interviewed by a WAAF Officer, one by one, and told we were to travel by train to Gloucester, to be picked up by a truck and transported to Innsworth Lane, RAF Camp. In order that we should arrive together with our personal files, she was putting someone in charge. "Step forward Parsons" she said. I was shocked! I had always been called MISS Parsons and the biggest shock was that I was responsible for getting myself and nine others to a place I had never heard of and never been to! I was told the place to change trains, given the files and railway warrants and we set off walking to the railway station - quite a long walk too!

Arrived at Gloucester and was met by a Sergeant who said "Are you the new lot"? I replied "Yes". There were two or three Airmen standing on the platform and they called out cheekily "Go back before it's too late", grinning all over their faces. We climbed into the truck, holding our skirts down and sat on wooden forms. Up came the tailboard and we were off. Arrived at camp, gates opened, lorry drove in, gates closed and a voice yelled "Everybody out". We were now in the WAAF and I heard someone say "Gawd 'elp us".

INITIATION - We were taken by a WAAF Sergeant to our 'new home' which was a hut with five beds each side and a black stove in the middle, these were to be our quarters. The Sergeant had a private room adjoining.

ABLUTIONS - Two long concrete troughs with individual enamel bowls under a cold water tap. Showers against the wall - I couldn't see myself wanting a cold shower! The Sergeant took us for a meal, returned us to the hut and told us to make ourselves comfortable. Coal, wood and paper were there to light the stove and she would be back at 5.30 to take us for tea. We sat on our beds, we looked miserable and dejected, the room felt cold and damp and somebody cried. Others, like me, probably shed a tear. There was one girl braver than the rest of us. I heard afterwards that she had been 'in domestic service'. She said "Come on girls, it could be worse, help me light the fire and we'll soon feel better" and we did and also got to know each other as we chatted together.

Sergeant came back, took us to tea, what we ate remains a mystery to this day. Whatever it was, we washed it down with huge mugs of tea, then back to the hut. Sergeant showed us how to stack our beds each morning - you don't make them. Three small mattresses commonly known as 'biscuits' are stacked on top of each other at the head of the bed with two blankets wrapped around them; two sheets and pillows then placed on top. A tin of floor polish and cloths were given to us and every morning after stacking your bed you polished the floor space all around your bed - it was brown lino. That way it was done properly, all the room would be polished ready for the 'Duty Officer's' inspection each day and God help you if it was not done properly !!! Sergeant left us with the words "Lights out at 10 o'clock, no talking after this, and 'reveille' is 6.00am".

We were in WAAF.

INDUCTION - Shock! 6.00am, cold and dark and a trumpet blowing over the Tannoy followed by Sergeant shouting to us to get out of bed, get ourselves washed and dressed by 7 o'clock.

Breakfast consisted of egg made from egg powder, a piece of bacon, slice of bread, dobs of margarine and marmalade and a big mug of tea. Then our day's work started with a lecture in the lecture room by a Flight Officer explaining what was to take place during our stay there. Kit, i.e. uniforms, etc., were to be issued that afternoon and a kit bag and gas mask, service style, plus brown paper and string to parcel up our civilian clothes which the RAF would send to our homes. We would also to be joined by two other groups of WAAF, making 30 in number.

Each day would be spent by PT, drill, lectures as necessary and we would be given three injections for typhoid, tetanus and typhus. Also, we would be vaccinated against smallpox. 'Standing Orders' and 'Daily Routine Orders' would be displayed on notice boards and should be read daily and complied with. Also, when you get your kit, make sure your hair does not touch your collar, if it does, get your hair cut! Name tapes should be stiched into your clothes on everything, laundry handed in weekly and collected, hence name tapes.

All the above came to pass; most of us suffered pain from the injections and were quite ill for several days. Nobody grumbled or made a fuss - it would have been a waste of time anyway. We were in the Air Force and we knew it!

POSTED - We now move on. We had now come to the end of our stay at Innsworth Lane and, as usual, we were awakened by the Tannoy at 6.00am. Someone jumped out of bed and shouted "Come on girls, we are being posted today, get up"! It was 'Elsie' the brave and helpful one who had been 'in domestic service' and who had been so kind and good for us in many ways - for instance, she showed us how to light the fire when the wood was damp and when we couldn't get it to light, such as rolling the newspaper up into sticks and holding a sheet of newspaper over the grills to give a draught. I must say I thought she was going to set the place alight on two or three occasions when the sheet of newspaper caught fire. As my mother used a gas poker and coal when she lit a fire I needed help when it was my turn to light the fire. I was glad of Elsie's help.

Another kindness was when some of were laid low with our injections, she would smuggle us a mug of tea out of the Mess when all we needed was a drink and felt too ill to get to breakfast. She took a big risk there because food was not allowed to be taken out of the Mess. In so many ways she was a staunch friend in need. We were excused PT, drilling etc., during this period and were allowed to take to our beds for a day or so but no malingering. If you were too ill to get to the Mess for food you were deemed to be too ill to eat any but Elsie helped - where she could. Some girls were alright, it wasn't everyone who was ill.

I wonder if Elsie is still alive and how life has treated her in the last 65 years. She deserved a better life than she had had previously. Her mother died when she was very young and she had a rotten stepmother for a time. Then an old aunt adopted her but made it clear to her that this was only because she was old and infirm and she could have Elsie as a drudge to take care of her. However, Auntie died and Elsie finished up in domestic service as a kitchen maid at a young age. It is my opinion that Elsie was happier in the WAAF than she had ever been, at least she had all her clothes supplied, her bed and board and one shilling (5p) a day, seven shillings a week, pocket money.

We packed our kit bags, said goodbye to those going on a different course and I finished up at Penarth in South Wales, in a private billet with two lovely people, Mr and Mrs Gray. He was a retired Sea Captain, she a retired Matron of a boys' Royal Naval Orphanage. They were married late in life and had no children but felt they should be patriotic and help the war effort by billeting a member of the Forces. They chose to have a WAAF, me, and I grew to love them and they too felt the same about me. It was a beautiful house they lived in, I had a lovely bedroom and when they heard my mother was ill with cancer, they wanted to adopt me although my mother did live for a few more years. Had I known my father would get married again a year after my mother's death, to a woman with four children, I think I would have accepted their offer of adoption. They said I was the type of daughter they would have wished for, blonde, slim, very blue eyes and a pink and white complexion. (Perhaps I should add here that I was fully aware of it! Well, no-one's perfect!)

Each day, as we were all in billets, we had to meet at a certain place and march properly as taught at Innsworth Lane, to a school classroom for our course as Clerk/Accountants. I was alreay a shorthand typist/bookkeeper as I went to a Secretarial College after I left High School in Hastings. My father was in the Police Force so my parents could afford it although I did have a brother and sister who were treated similarly; so we did have to live on a budget.

One of our teachers in Penarth had been a school teacher before enlisting in the RAF and he was great! A good teacher with a good sense of humour and I think we all had a 'crush' on him. Those were happy days.

On the course I had a friend called Joyce Hall and sometimes on a Sunday I would be allowed to invite her to tea, at other times she was allowed to have me to tea where she was billeted. She was billeted with a 'lady' whose family had been 'Lords and Ladies' of the Manor House but, due to the war, she did not live in the big house, only a small part of it. Instead of a retinue of servants, she had an old retainer who had been her butler and he managed the household domestics, etc. Being patriotic, she too took on a WAAF, i.e. Joyce Hall, a nice, clean, well-behaved girl and a nicely spoken one as well!

We did not have much spare time after shcool because we had a lot of homework to do so I suppose one could say that it was only at weekends that we were free to do much.

I have often found during my lifetime that something I regarded at the time as 'bad luck' turned out to be 'good luck' and this was one of those times. Because I had not been vaccinated as a baby for smallpox, my vaccination made me very ill and when I reached Penarth I fainted and was taken off in an ambulance to a big hospital at RAF St. Athen. My arm was a mass of dreadful sores, I had inflammation from wrist to elbow, a large lump under my arm and a very high temperature. I was in the hospital for about two weeks, there were no antibiotics then and when I was well enough to leave hospital I was sent home for two weeks sick leave. Therefore I missed the course I should have been on and I missed the billet I was allocated. Hence I finished up with Mr and Mrs Gray and on the same course as Joyce Hall. Hence my observation that 'bad luck' can and often does, turn out to be 'good luck'.

I digress - I have a tendency to do this in my old age! So I continue - our course ended and although I could tell you tales of Joyce and my weekend activities, because this is not a book or diary, I end by saying Joyce and I passed the final exams, although some did not, and we were ready to move on again.....

This story (so far) - (more in Part 2) - has been entered on the People's War website by Terry Greenwood on behalf of E.M Davidson (nee Parsons) who has given her permission so to do.

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