大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Ann Redgrave of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Olive Piercy and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My grandparents brought me up as my mother died when I was six. As soon as the war started I wanted to go into the Air Force but my Gran said I had to wait until I was 21. As soon as I was 21 I wrote to the place in Wigan saying how tall I was as part of my application. They said I wasn鈥檛 tall enough, so I wrote back and said I鈥檇 made a mistake in my height, and I was 5 foot. I was actually only 4 foot ten, but by the time I turned up to see them they had changed the regulations. When I got into the Air Force we had a fortnight in the Sheffield post office to learn how to use telephony. I was then sent to a place near Grimsby for 12 months. At that point I said that I鈥檇 like to be a radio telephonist so I went to Cranwell for eight weeks training. After a fortnight we had to do an exam, which I passed. We then had an exam every fortnight for the eight weeks and I passed.

I was then posted somewhere in Wales, where I worked as an air traffic controller, writing down everything that came in from the pilots. The system consisted of a lot of radio speakers. I did this work for quite a while and then they said they鈥檇 got too many of us there so they sent me up to Scotland, where I worked with pilots who had had accidents who they wanted to do some further training before coming back. One pilot there committed suicide. There were many badly injured but they wanted to get their nerve back.

When I was in Scotland I met a Pole at a dance and we decided that we鈥檇 get married when the war ended, but he was in the Tank Corps and got killed in Europe. We were writing to one another and suddenly the letters stopped and I didn鈥檛 know why. One of my friends saw an officer in the Tank Corps and he came and told me what had happened.

Later I went back to Wales and worked on radios again. We had to collect our water from a well there. Our job was to go up to a tower and wait for pilots to call in and ask for directions. We had a machine which moved around. With our pilots, you鈥檇 just point them in the right direction and they鈥檇 say 鈥淵es, we can find it now鈥�, but the Americans coming in wanted to be taken right the way to where they were going, which we didn鈥檛 like. We only wanted to give them the one reading.

I didn鈥檛 really like it there as I was working with a difficult woman who used to get me into trouble. We lived in private digs in pairs. The shifts were 8am til 12, 12 til 6pm, and 6 til 8 the next morning. We just used to sit there. I got to meet some of the pilots at the aerodrome, as well as some soldiers. We would often go dancing. We鈥檇 have a day off if we鈥檇 done a night shift, and that鈥檚 when we used to go to dances which I really enjoyed. These were sometimes held at the airfield.

We were fed quite well in the Forces, getting a cooked breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and a proper dinner at night, so we ate pretty well for wartime. When we worked nights we always had food to take up with us.

I stayed there until the end of the war in Europe, and was then demobbed. I missed the Forces life when I went back to my old job. My Grandmother had died when I was in the Forces, but I hadn鈥檛 been able to go to her funeral as I鈥檇 only been in for a couple of months at the time, which wasn鈥檛 long enough to get leave.

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