- Contributed byÌý
- oxcloseschool
- People in story:Ìý
- Catherine Douglas
- Background to story:Ìý
- Civilian Force
- Article ID:Ìý
- A4198908
- Contributed on:Ìý
- 15 June 2005
When I first joined the WAP, I went to Morecombe to do my training I was trained as a balloon operator, and then when the barrage balloons were made obsolete because the V bombs had been invented, we were all retrained. I was retrained as a flight mechanic on air frames only. In other words, not on the engine.
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I did and I didn’t. When I was on the barrage balloons, I was in London and there were air raids every night. I hid under the table with my tin helmet and a phone on standby, waiting for the word for the balloons to go up.
We were on Concert common with the barrage balloons and some planes came over. They bombed and shelled us the barrage balloons and they shelled the children in the school yard nearby — around 40 were killed. One of the ladies with me got shrapnel in the tops of both her legs and had to be taken to hospital.
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