大象传媒

It was a matter of six months before my demob came through 鈥� it depended on your age and how long you had been in. I went off to Bombay and caught a troopship, I didn鈥檛 have to man the Oerlikon cannons as we had going through the Mediterranean bound for South Africa. Conditions were just as bad, we were officers now but so many were coming back from India and Burma that we were treated like cattle. We were all very glad to get home safely. Suddenly I realised 鈥淥h dear, I have given up the Air Force, what do I do now?鈥� I hadn鈥檛 a clue because when I left Cambridge I had been an apprentice engineer. Now I was almost twenty-two and you cannot very well go back to being an apprentice when you want to get married which was why I had come rushing back. At that time you could easily stay on because so many people wanted to get out; from having too many people to not having enough

I got married and we have been together for sixty years. We met at school. Jo had problems with her maths homework so I used to help her at lunchtime. We lived at Cambridge and Cambridge was full of airmen because there were so many aerodromes 鈥� one of which I had been hoping to be posted to so I could nip home.

Being fairly young, by the time I was demobbed people older than me had been out for a year or two. All the best jobs were taken so I went into the Food Office. I was there a year when I heard about a scheme where you could get a grant to take the course to qualify as a civil pilot or navigator. I joined a course on this scheme and passed.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Radio Suffolk on behalf of Mrs M. J.Portwood and has been added to the site with her permission.

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