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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Katherine Kissane from WM CSV Action Desk on behalf of Frank Frances Looby, and has been added to the site with her permission. Frances Looby fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

My mother was born and brought up in different areas of London due to losing her mother to cancer of the womb. My mother was eight months old when her mom died — the youngest of nine children. She lived with different aunties, in different areas of London until she was 24. She joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and was posted to Birmingham where she met my father. She worked in the stores where the men came for tools or spare parts to repair the planes after the battles. She told me how frightening it was when the enemy planes came over in their hundreds to drop their bombs over the cities and towns; when you had to get down in the air raid shelters and stay there, however long it took until the all clear sound. They sometimes had to stay down the shelter for days, sharing everything with their families, friends and neighbours, and listening to their radios.

Because it was so dangerous and frightening, the children were sent to live in the quiet countryside. All those Lancaster bombers, Spitfires and Doodlebugs flying around! Maybe some of them did not come back to their homes as they were happy and settled where they were.

On the way up from London (where my mom had been living until she decided to leave home and join the W. A. F.), she saw land girls working in the fields and farms doing the men’s work as they had been called up for service. Mother’s number was LACW 2029761.

Mother met up with my dad in the stores, where she found out his surname was Russell and her name was Russ. That was a starting point for their relationship. They went out for a while and in the summer of 1944 — 17th June to be exact — they got some leave and got married. As it was war time, they got married in their uniforms. They polished their boots and got on a bus to the church named Our Lady of Lourdes. This is on the same site as the schools of the same name. They had eight children who later went to this school. They did not have a honeymoon; they went to my granny’s house for tea. When they were forty years married, myself and my brothers and sisters paid for them to have a party and a holiday for a week. Later in my mother became ill with Alzheimer’s, and died of heartache on 7th April 2002.

My dad volunteered to join the R. A. F. in 1938 for eight years when he was 26. He was a precision engineer working in British Aerospace, on the Rolls Royce RB211 engine. He was sent all over England to different camps such as Rissington, Manchester, Tangmere, Croydon and Kenley, to name a few. He was admitted to hospital a couple of times with burns to his hands from incendiary devices. I remember his fingers were quite chubby. He loved being in the R. A. F. and his job. His number in the R. A. F. was LAC 616116.

In 1944, he was in South Africa, but just before he left, mum tried to tell him that I was on the way, but she did not succeed. So when he came home, he found he had a daughter, as well as his wife. I was six months old.

My dad died in 1987 of a heart attack. He also had two brothers. I cannot remember what the one brother did, but Uncle Bernard joined the Navy. Unfortunately, he had an accident. He fell from a steel platform, so I should think that he would have to be discharged from the Navy.

One of my mother’s brothers emigrated to Australia and started up a sheep form before the war. When war broke out, he joined up as an R. A. F. navigator, and in 1943, the plane he was in got shot down over Germany. He was only 44 years old, and left a wife, Ivy, and a son, Stanley, who is now 75 years old

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