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From Service to Civilian Life

The end of strife in August 1945 brought a different set of problems for the nation. Demobilisation now had to be organised for thousands of service men and women who had known only a military life for many years. There were heroes to be honoured, brave deeds to be recorded, areas of service at home and overseas to be logged and numbered, age and length of service to be grouped for a fair release from duty. Married women were released in an early group. As I was now married, I hoped to be out with my husband fairly quickly. He had served for years from Dunkirk. He had seen action in Greece in 1941, and had served in the Middle East. He was also several years above the average age of servicemen, and so we expected him to be released early.

But while we waited, how were we to keep busy? Our CO wanted to keep his aircrew in good shape, so he introduced what we came to call the Cooks’ Tour. Ground crew and other staff awaiting demob were flown in Lancasters from our base in Upwood, Cambridgeshire to view the battlegrounds in France, Holland and Germany. Fairly soon it was my turn for a trip.

I can remember every detail about that flight. The navigator asked the four WAAF passengers if anyone was likely to be sick. I mentioned that I used to get sick on buses, so he gave me a seat beside him in the centre of the aircraft, the most stable position. I had noticed that the Elsan – the portable toilet – was positioned at the tail end of the aircraft, way beyond my reach. I’d made sure I had a paper bag with me.

Well, I lost my breakfast somewhere over the North Sea very early on, but managed to conquer it for a while, long enough to peep through the window at the shipping, and to look out as we came over the Hook of Holland. There we saw how the retreating Germans had destroyed the sea defences to allow the North Sea to swamp many square miles of Holland. Ruined farms were all around, with abandoned homes still standing, seawater up to their bedroom windows. It must have taken years for the Dutch to reclaim them.

Then we flew over Arnhem. The gliders were still in the fields, many of them broken – some from the landing, others, hopefully, from later damage. What stories they could tell. Then Nijmegen, and across the Rhine where the advancing Americans had broken through. Then we approached Cologne. This city had been virtually destroyed by Allied bombing during the latter stages of the war, and the pilot told us he would be flying low to allow us to view the enormous bomb damage. As he circled the city, we saw the cathedral, which appeared from a distance to be intact. As we came closer, it soon emerged that it was just a shell, and all the buildings around had been reduced to rubble. We could see pedestrians wending their way circuitously through the town, negotiating the piles of rubble and trying to use what was left of the roads. Very little transport was in evidence. One vehicle, a small yellow three-wheeler, was picking its way along at a pedestrian pace. Memories came flooding back to me of bombed-out Coventry, through which I had passed many times on duty during the hostilities. I could only feel some satisfaction that we had had a chance to fight back.

On the way back we crossed the channel at Dunkirk and saw for ourselves the wreckage that still lay there from 1940. The beaches were strewn with shell holes and burnt out vehicles and equipment. Small boats were visible underwater in the shallows, with larger ones to be seen further out. In deeper water, there were even ships lying wrecked, their superstructures rising above the waterline. It was all very sobering.

I began to feel sick again, so I lay down on the navigator’s bench with my parachute beneath my head as a pillow. Then the pilot announced that we were approaching the White Cliffs of Dover, Margate and the base for PLUTO. This was a remarkable piece of wartime technology; PLUTO stood for Pipe Line Under The Ocean. It was a huge pipeline which fed fuel right across the Channel from Britain to the invasion forces in Northern France in 1944. This I had to see. I started to get up, but my intercom was snagged in the parachute. I tugged my head up and freed myself, only to realise that I’d pulled the ripcord on the parachute. Designed, naturally, to deploy quickly in an emergency, a spring-loaded silken canopy began to unfurl uncontrollably, like a giant flower bud. But I was determined to see this, so, grabbing the chute to my bosom, I looked out. I can still see the giant wooden drum that housed the British end of the pipeline. It somehow completed the circle for me. It didn’t matter to me that I was likely to be fined for being sick in an aircraft, or fined even more for misuse of a parachute. This was the end of my war, and everything was about to change.

In the end I wasn’t fined for either offence. Maybe the end of the war was affecting everybody – even the RAF! But the nausea continued. I reported sick, and was sent home on compassionate leave. A few weeks later, I was a civilian once more; about to face new obstacles, and a new future.

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