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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Queenie Stubley Hancock ALCM and has been added to the site with her permission…

My own special memory comes vividly back, with all its original glow of happiness.

For it was the first occasion I ever played the piano in public, and what a public! Four hundred men of the Royal Air Force!

After five years of intensive study at the piano and still only 15 years of age, I had just passed my degree to become an Associate of the London College of Music. Almost simultaneously war descended upon us and the boys of the RAF were billeted at Blackpool.

Our parish church of South Shore had a large adjacent memorial hall, which was immediately requisitioned by the Government to be used as a base for many activities connected with the RAF. It was and still is, a beautiful building with a domed roof, a lovely ballroom floor for weekly dances and a large stage equipped with complete lighting deck, many backdrops and heavy velvet front curtains. Absolutely ideal for entertaining the troops.

Every Sunday evening a first-class show was staged by professional artistes and the airmen packed in, in their hundreds. I was content to be one of the tea girls helping in the adjacent kitchen, but, during the shows, would gaze up in admiration at all those artistes behind the footlights with such beautiful voices and could just imagine the great thrill they must have felt to be able to entertain so rewardingly.

One evening there was a slight delay in curtain up and I was suddenly approached and asked if I would act as ‘warm up’ playing a selection of sing-along tunes in front of the curtains. Before I could recover from the shock to the nerves that this request brought, the piano was hastily pushed into place just behind the footlights and the announcement made.

Imagine the feeling of a 16 year-old girl stepping through the centre opening of the curtains to be met by the sight of row upon row of blue uniforms and 400 pairs of eyes gazing up in expectation?

Then a great rush of cheering came towards me from all those delightful men. What an exhilarating moment.

Straight from five years of Chopin and Beethoven to ‘Roll out the Barrel’ and ‘Run Rabbit Run.’ A never-to-be forgotten experience; I became a regular ‘warm up’ every week and so continued through the war years, receiving many invitations to play in the houses where the men were billeted, as well as at musical events.

No longer just a tea girl but a recognized artiste equal to the rest.

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