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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Elizabeth Perez of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Mary Blood and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Mary’s story, together with the war story of her husband, Harry Blood, was transcribed onto a floppy disc by Fred Kennington, thereby saving Stockport Library Service staff an immense amount of work!

I was born Mary Pettit in January 1922, just outside Lincoln. My mother had a prolonged period in hospital, and died when I was young. My father remarried, and I had a wonderful stepmother. Unless you passed the Scholarship at eleven and went to a Grammar School, you left school at fourteen and that is what I did – but that is another story. In 1936 there were not many options open to fourteen-year-old girls and I had to go into service. Overall I was fortunate in the employers I had, but it was not a life I wanted permanently.

When war broke out in 1939, life was clearly going to change. As I approached my eighteenth birthday, I realised that I would probably be called up. I had no wish to be pushed into something and thought about joining one of the Women’s Services. The W.R.N.S. seemed to take the toffee-nosed (I might be wrong in it, but that is what I thought at the time). I did not fancy the Army, then the W.A.T.S., so I thought the W.A.A.Fs. would be the best. In any case, my Dad had been in the Royal Flying Corps in the 1914-18 War, so I should follow in his footsteps.

I left my job in service, and volunteered for the W.A.A.F. in January 1940 on my 18th birthday. Not thinking I would be long in going in, I just did odd jobs to bring some coppers in. But it was to be longer than I thought. I was called up on 10th April 1940. I received a railway warrant and instructions to attend at Victory House in London, the HQ of the R.A.F. to determine whether or not they would have me. On arrival there, we had our medicals, all the various interviews, etc., and at the end of the afternoon, I was told I was accepted and I was now a W.A.A.F., number 890410, ACW2 (Aircraftswoman Grade 2) Pettit. I had signed on for four years. Conscription of women did not start until 1941, or later, and those of us who volunteered, signed on for four years, in my case, until April 1944. Late that afternoon, we were given a ticket for the Underground to go to Uxbridge and a card to complete and send home to say I would not be returning that night. We tumbled out at Uxbridge Station and were met by a W.A.A.F. Corporal with a 15cwt truck. We clambered into it and went on to West Drayton, a miscellaneous lot such as you have never seen! All sorts of shapes and sizes – from all kinds of backgrounds. Most were around my age, eighteen to twenty with a few who were into their thirties.

We had just a fortnight’s training and we were given uniform – assuming they had some to fit us. Some were lucky enough to get most items, others not so. What we didn’t get at West Drayton, we picked up at our next posting, or wherever. There might not be a shirt, so you just wore your own blouse. The small girls were the worst off. There was one very small girl for whom no shoes could be found. She was given a pair two sizes too big. When it came to marching, she was slopping out of these ‘boats’ and was eventually told to leave the parade as she was spoiling it.

We were taught how to march, and at the end of the fortnight we were told ‘You’ll do, you can go’. No ‘Passing out Parades’ in those days. Many of the girls were homesick. I had been in service and away from home so I settled in more easily than some. Nevertheless, it was a culture shock, and not the first we would have. We were placed together in a hut with about thirty girls; a stove in the middle; washing facilities in the nearby ‘ablutions block’. ‘Ablutions’ – a new word that would come into our everyday vocabulary. There was no privacy at all, some had difficulty coping with this. However, what could have been tragic had you been on your own, could be hilarious when you were in a group. Having had so little difficulty in settling in, to me it was an adventure. I had lived in a village, left school at fourteen, and gone into service, which had taken me to Devon, to London and to Scotland, so perhaps I was not quite so ‘green’ at a time when we were all naïve. Sex was not a subject normally discussed in those days and it was several worlds away from today.

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