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When the war broke out, I was two weeks from my 15th birthday. I went for a holiday to my aunt’s in Nottingham, and my mother wrote that I should stay there, because of the bombing in Hull. I stayed nearly two years.

I joined up with the WAAF in 1942, when I was 17 and a half. They only wanted cooks and balloon operators, and after the aptitude test I was sent to Sheffield to train as a balloon operator.

When we passed out they send me back to Hull, which I didn’t want, because I’d joined up to see the world, but they said we shouldn’t break the team up. So I went back to Hull, and we were stationed next to Reckitt’s on Damson Lane. The site’s still there.

The balloon was 63ft long, filled with half air and half hydrogen, with the hydrogen at the top and a wet cloth to keep the two separate so it wouldn’t catch fire. We had to wear gloves to fill it. It was attached to a very long line on a motorised winch on the back of a lorry. Operating the balloon was just like driving, except you were looking up.

When there was an air raid, we got the codeword ‘shine’: that meant take the balloon as high up as you can. When our fighters came along we had to bring it back down.
Once the engine broke down on the lorry and we couldn’t bring it down, and it was panic stations!

The wire could swing a lot with the wind, and when we took the balloon down, it would sometimes go into the trees between us and Reckitt’s with the crosswind. The men coming out of Reckitt’s were often surprised, because it was heading right for them. The guy ropes used to get round the trees too, and up went the trees, roots and everything. There was a ripcord on the side, and sometimes the balloon damaged itself when you took it down.

There was a crew of about 6 of us on the site, and 2 corporals, all women. We had two Nissen Huts on site that we lived in, so we didn’t go home very often while on duty. We had to do our own cooking (I was sent on a week’s cooking course to Sutton, at the big RAF camp). Once you were on site you were on your own. We did all sorts of stupid things like give each other rides on the balloon, but not very high up.

It was a filthy job: all mechanical, black, and wind blowing. We had to do wire splicing, rope splicing, and drive the winch. Only two of us ever drove it, the Hull girls, the only ones who’d been in air raids.

It worried my mum and dad. My mum used to send my dad round to see it I was all right. My dad was a tugmaster, and he used to take supplies to crews that operated balloons on the Humber. So you could say it was in the family.

(Transcribed by Joachim Noreiko)

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