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A WAAFs wartime memories Part One - Bomber Command then Commissioned to Code and Cypher Training College and on to Coastal Command

Part One of an oral history interview with Mrs. Noreen Jackson conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum

“I do remember the build up. My brother was in the RNVR so he was called up in the Navy as a Lieutenant Commander and he was called up (in 1939). So he went to the Middle East for a few months I think in 1938 and so then he was obviously disbanded.

I was 21 in 1939 so I was 22 in 1940 and obviously we were young, you know what you were like when you were 20, you didn’t take much notice, you lived for the day didn’t you? But I know my father was - I was engaged to a German at that time which was a bit tricky. So in actual fact, fair enough he was a German Jew, he was a refugee over here. As far as we were concerned he was a genuine refugee and my family weren’t a bit happy about it but I mean I was young.

Then funnily enough we were in church on September the 3rd when war was announced, both of us and so we came home, my father was in a panic. We lived in Golders Green at that time. My father was in a panic, there were wet blankets everywhere to put round the doors to keep the gas out, absolutely wet blankets, it was an awful flap. That’s what I remember about that.

Then I think life went on, I wasn’t working you see, so life went on, I used to play a lot of tennis. That first winter, from September, it just went on normally. After the war started it was very quiet and I knew I wanted to go into the Services. My oldest brother wasn’t, he was in a reserved occupation, my second brother was in (the Navy) and my youngest brother was in the Army. So I knew I wanted to get in but I was the only girl at home, my father was terribly against it, he didn’t want me to leave home, he expected me to live at home. We went through that normal winter. I think this chap was interned fairly early, he was interned in London and then he went down to Devon, I think to Paignton and then I think to the Isle of Man, I lost touch actually.

Then round about February or March in 1940 a friend of mine whom I knew very well said, ‘Noreen, I’m going to join up to the WAAF. Do you want to come up to Kingsway with me?’ So I said, ‘Yes, I’ll come’ I said, ‘but I’m not joining, I’m not joining!’ So I went up to London with her and we had to go to Kingsway in London and she joined up and Fiona joined up and signed up and everything and I found myself doing it as well. Then you had to give a wee sample. Well I’d had a bit of collywobble’s the night before and I think I stood there for three hours before I could spend a penny, I really do, Fiona did it straight away but I could not do a sample! That was in early 1940. Life went on normally and my family knew that I had volunteered and my brother who was in Navy was absolutely furious about it, he wasn’t a bit happy about it.

Anyway, my father was a widower you see and in July (1940) I got called up which was lovely. I got called up and I went to Uxbridge. We joined up there as an ordinary WAAF, WAC 2. You were sent to Uxbridge where you were trained. By the time I got there it was just about the Battle of Britain, it was just about August and it was happening. I spent the first fortnight I should think sleeping in a bunker situation underneath the ground, sleeping like that for the first fortnight. After a time, I think I was there for two months, for initial training and turning up which trade they wanted you to do and that sort of thing. If you were a driver or a cook they could place you quite easily but if you weren’t quite sure what you wanted to do they had to think about it.

The Battle of Britain for us in 1940, when I first joined up, that went on night after night after night, the
bombing but I was at Uxbridge for that and I was just joined up and we were told what to do, ‘go into the shelters’ and that sort of thing and we were training the whole time. It lasted about six weeks - the ‘Battle of Britain’. It was intense but we lived through it, we got through it. We heard the news, you saw what going on but you were young, you were doing a job and you lived for that time, you have to realise that. It’s difficult perhaps for you to understand that, but you had to do what you were doing. And you knew that London was alight but you just had to go down the shelters and sleep and get on with your work the next day.

So from there I was sent to ‘Ops’ - they called it. I was sent to Bomber Command at the end of 1940. Bomber Command is High Wycombe and we worked in the Ops Room, we were all young WAAFs together, we worked in the Ops Room. I worked there that winter and then during the winter I was asked if I’d like a Commission and so I sort of said, ‘Yes.’ I mean it was new word to me anyway and I said, ‘Yes, I would.’ In March (1941) I think it was I went before four people to be considered what I wanted to do as an Officer. I was sent to Gerrards Cross for training and I was Commissioned. We had to learn how to march and learn how to give orders and generally speaking to other people. The nice part about it was we had single rooms and things there because I’d been in a dormitory at Bomber Command, which was good fun, we had good fun at Bomber Command because we were right out in the sticks and you know I used to hitch hike everywhere, we all hitch hiked. My most embarrassing one was going back - because I had a boyfriend by that time, I was at High Wycombe and he was Oxford or something. And I’ll never forget in the middle of High Wycombe, I always used to ask a Policeman if he could get me a lift. We always just used to get down into High Wycombe from Bomber Command by walking, it wasn’t all that far, and Bomber Command is now Strike Command I think, and so we used to get down there and I’ll never forget I said, ‘Could you get me a lift?’ He said, ‘Where do you want to go?’ I said, ‘I’m going to Oxford.’ If you were a young WAAF they all bent over backwards to help you and I wasn’t Commissioned then. And then I’ll never forget, they stopped a Staff car and all you could see was red tabs and I said to the Policeman, ‘Not that car, not that car!’ but I was in it. I’ll never forget. I was absolutely scared, not scared stiff but obviously they were Staff Officers and I had to sit in there and say nothing. You know they tried to put me at ease but I was very young, that was the last time I hitch hiked actually.

It was a busy time at Bomber Command we used see all the aeroplanes coming in and out and our job was to put all the things on the maps. We had a big wall perhaps three times the size of that and when we were duty at night, we were on duty day or night, we sort of had to push them to where the bombing was going on that night, put it all on the chart. We must have had flags, I think. It was different from Fighter Command. That’s what we did and you know it was the first time that any of us had worked with men to be quite truthful. I’ll never forget seeing a Group Captain shaving with an electric razor it horrified me, you know, in the middle of the night because I mean we were young, impressionable WAAFs. There were these men who were most probably in their thirties, all obviously higher ranking, Wing Commanders, Squadron Leaders and Group and also the C&C Bomber Commander who was Sir Charles Portal in those days, he’d be an Air Marshal.

Then I got Commissioned, I can’t remember how long the course was, might have been a month, I don’t know. You trained to be an Officer, make sure that you used your knife and fork right and then I was sent to Oxford, to the Code and Cypher School at Oxford, that would have been 1941. I was Assistant Section Officer at that time, that is a first commission. I did a course at Oxford where all the Code and Cypher people went and from there I was posted to Coastal Command at Northwood. That takes us up to 1941 doesn’t it? So I was at Coastal Command in 1941. We were accommodated in houses. We were accommodated in a lovely big house, it seemed big in those days, it wasn’t all that big, it was just the same sort of house I lived in with the family, a five bedroomed house, a nice garden. I’ll never forget, people called (Fletcher) Friscote (name of their house) and I’ll never forget, they were paid for having us, two WAAF Officers if not three. They were paid quite well and we used to go down for breakfast and there they would be eating a cooked breakfast and we were given toast and things like that. That would have had our coupons. Fair enough, we had a key to the house and that sort of thing. We had our own little suite of rooms but I’ll never forget you know we used to know very well that they were doing quite well at it and didn’t treat us very well. So that was interesting really. They had to have people billeted with them. That was the only time I ever billeted with a family actually. Fair enough, they gave me that tray at the back, for a wedding present. He was in antiques I think. But at the same time we never forget, when we came off duty and having our breakfast and things like that, obviously bacon wasn’t available all the time and eggs and that but they had an allowance for us and we never seemed to see it. We always sort of got measly things and then we had to go to bed on it. I know we talked about it and laughed about it, they way they didn’t look after us very well.

You know it was a busy time at Coastal Command. We were on shifts and most probably four of us on at time around the clock, so you either did eight ‘til three and three ‘til ten or the night shift. We were doing Code and Cypher at Northwood, we were typing the whole time. The same as the Code and Cypher School, that was quite hard work. At Northwood there were only a few of us on duty at a time and with Code and Cyphers it is done in the books and you get a page of the day - the Naval codes, the Army codes, the Air Force codes and you put your letters against it and translates into English or it translates back if you are sending out signals, you ‘scramble it’ so it goes out. Doing cyphers is not easy and you had to learn that the Naval ones are different from the Air Force ones. And the Naval ones some would come in letters and some would come in words, you had blocks of five. You had five letters and then you have to look up in this coding thing, you’d see what date it is, what date it is and that is relevant to that particular day and then you work it on from there. Then sometimes the codes hadn’t been done correctly and then you had to try and get the mistakes and you had to try and ferret them out or get help as to why you couldn’t get them out because they might have used the wrong day. The Naval ones, we all enjoyed doing the Naval ones because they were all letters, I don’t know why. I used to do it with somebody else sit in pairs and used to put it there and put it in and the girl on my right or I would say so, so and so and that was a word, to be or has been or whatever. And then we would say, ‘Well, what’s that word then?’ We used to have to think about it because sometime it had been put in wrong, human error. I wasn’t a touch typist and I never have been so I think fair enough, we did them on a typex machine. It’s rather like a computer but the keys are much heavier and you put it in one end with a garbled message and it came out in to English or the other way round. They have got one at Bletchley I think. But you just typed it. That was all much more low key, it was alright but at the same time there wasn’t the pressure on us there. We were very busy but it wasn’t too busy. We laughed a lot. We had a lot of fun. It was hard work and it was serious but at the same time we had a lot of fun. I mean I can tell you some lighter bits about it. I’ll never forget one Christmas Eve - we had a Group Officer who was in charge of us, who was a really old awful woman. And I’ll never forget one of the Officers in the Mess, we were all Officers, (you didn’t mix with any ranks in those days, you didn’t mix at all) and I’ll never forget this friend, the chap I was friendly with pulled me by my belt right across to this Group Officer, saying ‘Look who I’ve got on the end of my lead!’ It was Christmas Eve, I think I was posted, I was sent somewhere else.

I went up to Skegness for about three months but by that time I’d met my husband, he was in the Air Ministry. I met him in about the June of that year, 1941. I met him about the June and so that was good. Then I think in the autumn when this old battleaxe didn’t like me because I misbehaved a bit, she posted me to Skegness which was the back of beyond, absolutely the back of beyond and I was the only one there so it was absolutely awful. I think I kicked up a hell a fuss and I got sent down to the Air Ministry in London from there."

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