大象传媒

THE WAR YEARS

HEATHER SIMPSON

Chapter 1 Phoney War. l939-40

1939 - a different time, a different place, a different life.
Yes, life was different then. For many of us it was a well ordered and predictable life before the War came to shake us all up like the tiny coloured pieces in a kaleidoscope, altering the patterns of our lives and setting us down again in any number of strange places.
In September 1939 I was 19 years old. I had left school two years earlier and I worked for my living as secretary to the managing director of a firm of coffee merchants in the city of London. Quite grown-up you might think. No. I was still a minor, two years away from getting "the key to the door" at the age of 21 when I would legally become an adult no longer within the care and control of my parents. Even in those pre-war days there were a few enterprising and adventurous souls who managed to fly from the nest but as a general rule a girl lived at home until she married and did as her parents told her. That is how it came about that after the momentous declaration of war on the 3rd September I allowed myself to be evacuated with my mother from our house in Lee to Wadhurst in Kent. Father wanted us out of the way for a while until he could find out how the war was going and how much extra time he would have to spend at the Blackheath bank where he was manager.
It had all been arranged and I had not been included in any of the discussions. I was just told. I felt most unhappy about it all. I felt bad about leaving Daddy even if it was what he wanted and I felt as if I were running away. What would people think?
I left home reluctantly and grumpily, but when I got to Wadhurst I couldn't help being glad that I had come. Our new temporary home was a little wooden house in the middle of a field. Aptly it was called "Field Cottage". The September sun shone on the lovely silvery wood of the cottage walls and made it as warm as a garden shed in high summer. Also in a field between the lane and the cottage was a pen of big fat geese who set up a tremendous honking when anyone approached. Did you know that geese are wonderful watchdogs? They are not nice creatures though. However kindly one speaks to them they just hiss angrily in reply.
England in the autumn of 1939 seems in my memory to have had a distinctive atmosphere about it. That September the sun shone brilliantly, enveloping everything in a golden embrace. The skies were blue and clear and quiet. No planes disturbed the song of the birds. Along the lane leading to our cottage the hedges were full of blackberries, huge, glowing and oozing juice, already half-stewed by the sun. In all the Kentish orchards and gardens trees were laden with ripe fruit and on the grass beneath the heavy branches wasps tottered about amongst the fallen fruit in a droning drunken stupor. None of the fruit went to waste and in Wadhurst kitchens housewives busily stirred jam and bottled the best fruit (no home freezers remember) ready for the hard times ahead. As autumn wore on and the nights became crisply cold the country took on an old fashioned air of cosiness. People collected fallen branches to burn and to eke out the coal ration, so a lovely smell of wood smoke filled the air. Traffic was at a minimum as petrol was rationed, so a great quiet hung over little towns and villages. However we knew that we must expect air attacks from Germany, so it was important that no light should be allowed to show and act as a guide to the enemy bombers. A complete black-out had been imposed and at dusk blackout curtains were put up and Air Raid Wardens did their rounds, making sure that no chink of light shone in the velvety darkness. All street lights were switched off for the duration of the war, but in a remarkably short time we got accustomed to finding our way about in the blackness of night with only a small pocket torch to cast a glow-worm's light on our path. The hunt for no. 8 batteries to use in our trusty torches became one of the great pursuits of the war. We called this period of time the Phoney War, because nothing seemed to be happening. Out in the darkness across the sea the enemy was prowling and plotting, but we had battened down the hatches ready for the storm and we slept soundly in our warm beds.
I had already got a job to go to in Wadhurst. I suppose growing up in London had made me somewhat arrogant in my attitude towards "country folk". On my first Saturday there I marched into the Post Office cum village store and asked what I could do to help, just as if it were a Battle Zone. Surprisingly there was a job for me. The local Corn and Coal Merchant had a vacancy for a Secretary/Book-keeper and I soon settled down to work in the little dark office behind the shop. I adored the shop, with its open sacks of chicken feed, corn and bran and dog biscuits sold by the scoop, with its bags of coal and Coalite, its firelighters, bean poles, balls of twine, flower seeds and garden gnomes. I loved it if the shop manager was out humping things about in the store and then, when I heard the shop bell, I would hurry into the shop to weigh out dog biscuits or bone-meal or bird seed for the canary. The Coal Merchant, Mr Jones, was a sick man. He always sat in the office in his trilby hat and mittens, from which protruded his poor red arthritic fingers. As winter came on he sat in his overcoat and muffler too. He had a chronic cough and swigged cough mixture straight from the bottle - about half a bottle at a time. Mr Jones was very nice to me, as were the shop manager, Mr Clark, and the 14-year-old lad who swept up.
Mother and I joined the Home Nursing class in the village hall. We had done First Aid in London the year before. Home Nursing seemed to consist mainly of bandaging, which I loved. I could bandage heads, noses, jaws, arms, legs, fingers and toes. I had missed my vocation. I should have been apprenticed to an Egyptian mummifier. Also we knitted for the troops. After tea we carefully checked the blackout curtains, banked up the fire, turned on the wireless and got out the khaki wool. I was hopeless, but in the course of time I turned out a balaclava helmet for a giant and mittens that might possibly have fitted a midget. Father joined us on Friday nights to spend the week-end in Wadhurst.
In the New Year the weather became bitterly cold and the Kentish fields were covered in soft white snow, pretty as a Christmas card. In January Mr Clark was called up, leaving me with a lot of extra work, so a gentleman (I mean a Gentleman) came in to help with the accounts. He was middle-aged and fierce looking and he wore hairy, ginger coloured plusfours and jacket that rather clashed with his ruddy complexion. But he was kind. He spent his sweet ration on bars of Fry's Chocolate Cream for me. He was shocked to discover that Mr. Jones didn't provide afternoon tea and so he arranged for the pub opposite to supply a pot of tea for us all, which he paid for each day. The Lad was sent over to collect the tray stacked with cups and saucers, teapot, hot water jug, bowl of sugar lumps, etc. His face was a picture when he brought it back - a mixture of embarrassment, tolerance and plain amazement at the strange ways of the gentry. The Gentleman was always threatening to take me out to dinner, but the weather was too bad and the roads too icy to arrange a date, much to my relief, ungrateful girl that I was.
The bad weather made it hard for Father to live alone and to pay his weekend visits to Wadhurst, so in March Mother and I returned to London.
I got a job in a big solicitors' office in the City, which was very dull after the Corn and Coal Merchants and Mother joined the WVS, helping to run a mobile canteen for the army.
Before I started my new job, Tony and Kay, my brother and sister in law and I had a holiday together in a tiny, remote village in the New Forest, renting a very primitive little cottage for the week. In those days a visit to another part of the country felt as strange to us as a holiday abroad feels today. The local inhabitants spoke differently, often almost unintelligibly, and their daily lives were different from ours. Life in the Forces was to accustom us to hearing different dialects and later television and radio were to bring a universal way of life to the whole country, but in 1940 holidays were simple, and fun just because they were different.
We were happy with the beauty of the countryside and the novelty of trying to cook on a kitchen range and using the privy at the bottom of the garden. It was very cold during our holiday so I would always dress up to visit the privy, wearing my outdoor coat and my big fur gloves. The three of us were very contented in the little country cottage during that strangely expectant waiting time of the Phoney War. Tony was waiting to join the Army Medical Corps, Kay was waiting for the birth of their first child and I was waiting for the unknown future.

Chapter 2 Blitz. 1940-41

Summer came early in 1940. By the end of May it was delightfully warm and roses were starting to bloom in suburban gardens. Girls like me wore their light summer frocks to work in the City and ate their lunch under the fresh green trees in the parks. So the news coming through to us was particularly incongruous. The British Army, fighting in France, was being hopelessly out-manoeuvred by the Germans and was retreating to the coast. Some British troops were already being withdrawn and returned to Britain, but a last stand was being made on the beaches of a little place called Dunkirk. With their backs to the sea, our troops were trapped and mercilessly shelled and bombed by the Germans.
Walking through the City streets to work one day I read the headlines on the newspaper placards with a sort of detached disbelief. I couldn't take in the truth. There was a senior secretary in our office, a bustling, efficient young lady, called Betty. I was surprised when I arrived at work to find her sitting at her desk in tears while the other girls stood round her in a mute semi-circle. Betty's husband was with the Army in France and she had no idea whether he was alive or dead. We were all speechless and inadequate as we came face to face with the real fear and dread of war. I attempted a clumsy word of comfort and she turned on me furiously. "What do you know about it?" she cried. "It's all right for you. You haven't got anyone over there". No one said a word after that. One by one we went miserably to our desks and tried to get on with our work.
In France conditions were desperate and at last came the final evacuation of Dunkirk. This took place under heavy bombardment and it became apparent that the Navy couldn't manage the evacuation of so many troops quickly enough. Somehow word was spread secretly and speedily around the coast and rivers of Britain that anyone with a seaworthy boat was to assemble at a certain point. Then a great armada of little boats sailed across the sea to rescue our beleaguered troops. Such heroism and daring did a lot to raise the morale of those who read about it, but I think many of us felt a little ashamed. We had been complacent and thoughtless, quite sure of our superiority. Belgium and the Netherlands had capitulated to the Germans and within weeks came the fall of France. Now we had to face the fact that Britain stood alone against the might of Nazi Germany.
Many refugees from Belgium and France found their way across the Channel to England and some of them were housed in temporary homes in Lewisham, of all unsuitable places. I saw an advertisement in the local paper for someone capable of taking shorthand and typing in French to work in the Refugee Department of the local Council and I thought I would have a go. There were just three of us in the Department which was housed at one end of a huge Council chamber in the Town Hall, partitioned off from other activities that were going on in the large room. Miss Wilson was in charge. She was a serious young woman in her late thirties who spoke French fluently, but who was obviously a worrier. The filing clerk was Miss Gore, who was a wonderful relic of Edwardian gentility. Her white hair was piled on top of her head and kept in perfect place with a profusion of hairpins. She wore long silk dresses with an inset of lace in the V-neck for modesty. She sat ramrod straight, never using the support of the chair back, and her delicate lady's fingers were never still as she sorted and resorted her card index system like someone about to deal a hand of whist. Then there was me with my typewriter and my English/French dictionary. I got on fine with the typing in French, but I still had the average English person's reluctance to utter a word in a foreign language. If Miss Wilson was out of the room when one of the refugees came in I would hastily stem the flow of furious and aggrieved French with "Assayez vous un moment, s'il vous plait" and with what I hoped was an encouraging smile I would scurry back to the safety of my typewriter. Miss Gore would incline her head in polite greeting and continue shuffling her cards without saying a word. So poor Miss Wilson bore the brunt of all the Gallic anger and disgust at what many of the refugees considered to be very inferior billets. I felt great sympathy for these refugees and was pleased to be able to help in a small way, but I couldn't help being amused by the attitude of some of them, who complained as if they were paying full rates in a 5 star hotel. No wonder Miss Wilson looked harassed. We three maiden ladies got on very well together in our little room behind the partition and in time we got everyone sorted out to their rather grudging satisfaction.
We were hearing news of the bombing of ports along the south coast and next the airfields around London were the targets for heavy bombing, as Hitler's intention was to destroy the Royal Air Force and thus greatly weaken our defences against invasion. So the Battle of Britain began.
Few of us who were alive then can remember without emotion the handful of young men, many straight from school or university, who took to the skies and fought off the mighty Luftwaffe. Most of the dogfights took place over the fields of Kent and Sussex, but some came near enough to London to be seen from our garden. Two tiny planes high in the blue. Two young airmen fighting to the death. Sometimes we would see a pilot executing a jubilant "victory roll" as he returned to his airfield. Such a sight was exciting and cheering but nonetheless these were very desperate times.
All too often a white vapour trail across a bright sky was the fast fading memorial to a brave young life.
So many lives were lost in those few short weeks of summer sunshine, but at a dreadful cost the Battle of Britain was won and the threat of invasion was averted. In paying tribute to the pilots of the Royal Air Force Winston Churchill spoke words which have become immortal, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".
Hitler had failed to destroy the airfields, but nonetheless his attention was now turned to destroying London, the heart of the country. Each evening the wailing sirens sounded, but at first the bombing was some distance from us. One night Father and I went out into the garden to stretch our legs. It seemed very light out there. We walked up the path and looked over towards the east. The entire sky was an appalling brilliant red, incandescent, flickering, glowing with now and again giant flames erupting to the heavens. It was like a mediaeval conception of hell. It looked as if the fire was at the end of the road, but it was much further away than that. The London Docks were ablaze.
Everyone did their little bit during the Blitz. Father and I were fire spotters for our road and I was on a rota to take a turn on night duty in the Civil Defence Central Control room in the basement of the Town Hall, where I worked by day. In the main Control room were two long rows of telephones. Sometimes we volunteers were allowed to man one of the telephones, but mostly they were manned by professional telephonists and we were just runners. One row of telephones was for incoming calls and received all the reports of incidents from the Air Raid Wardens. A runner took the written message to the Controller and his assistants in the next room and they sent messages back to the telephonists on the outgoing lines, calling for ambulances, fire engines or whatever was wanted for each incident. It sounds amateurish, but actually it all worked pretty quickly.
At first things were fairly quiet in our area, but I happened to be on duty on the night that Lewisham received its first big raid. Soon the incoming lines were jammed with reports of incidents and those on the outgoing lines were reporting that there were simply not enough ambulances, etc. available. To make matters worse, most of the people on duty lived in Lewisham and they were hearing reports of bombs in their own streets. I have a lasting memory of the Controller suddenly appearing in the telephone room, a wad of incident reports in his hand and his homely red face shiny with sweat. He was in his shirt sleeves and wore his carpet slippers, as he would have done for a comfortable quiet night. He looked bewildered and somehow hurt, like a child who had received an undeserved slap, but he worked like a Trojan to get everything sorted out. After that night we became used to heavy raids in our corner of south east London.
We soon discovered that the little air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden was far from comfortable and Father had a small square reinforced room built on to the back of the house. It had three bunks and electric light and it was quite cosy. Each evening when Father and I returned from work Mother would be waiting for us in her smart navy blue siren suit 鈥� rather like a track suit only smarter (trust Mother to have something chic for the air raids!). She always had a hot meal ready and was anxious for us to eat it before the raid started. It must have been hard to be a wife and mother during those days; hard to buy food with shops being bombed and supplies delayed and then hard to get a meal ready, eaten and washed up before the siren's banshee wail sent us to the shelter with our playing cards and knitting and books. There were some daylight raids now as well as the inevitable night ones and poor Mother didn't know when to take a bath. "It would be so humiliating to be found dead with no clothes on", she worried.
Guibal Road was a road of old or middle aged people. Small children had been evacuated to the country at the outbreak of war. Other young ones had been evacuated with their schools, colleges or businesses or they were in the Forces.
I was the only one left. "It's a treat to see a young smiling face", people would tell me and "You are so lucky to have a daughter to cheer you up", they would say to Mother. I was quite proud of my role of universal Pollyanna and went around smiling brightly.
The raids went on all through the autumn and winter of 1940/41 and at first we felt that we were defenceless against the bombers. Then an anti-aircraft gun was positioned at the bottom of the road and, against the sound of planes and bombs, came the steady boom, boom of "our gun". What a comfort. "Our gun" was like a living being to us. "There goes our gun", we said as it boomed out and, if it was quiet, we got very petulant. "Where's our gun? Why isn't it firing?鈥� we wanted to know. Never mind the poor men who were actually doing the firing of "our gun". Only one house in our road (fortunately unoccupied) received a direct hit from a land mine, but of course there was lots of minor damage, broken windows etc., mostly caused by blast. I wasn't really too frightened in the raids. This was not due to courage, but to a lack of imagination. People were fond of saying, "It's no good worrying. If a bomb has your number on it then it will get you. There is nothing you can do about it". I simply couldn't imagine a bomb having 鈥榤y number on it鈥�, so I felt quite safe. (If a bomb had fallen on 86 Guibal Road it would have been a very nasty surprise to me!)
For many, noise was the hardest thing to bear. Sometimes amidst all the racket one became aware of a somehow different sound as on the occasion when I heard a German bomber, obviously crippled and with failing engine, struggling through the sky just above us. It seemed so close that I could actually feel the fear of the enemy bomber's crew and I couldn't help sending up a prayer for their safety 鈥� how treacherous! They were the enemy, sent to destroy and kill, but at that moment they were simply human beings in distress.
One night Father left the shelter to do his fire spotting stint and was back at once with "Heather, I want you". And what a pretty sight met my eyes. All over our and the neighbouring gardens incendiary bombs burnt merrily, lighting the bird baths, rose arbours and crazy paving as if the gardens were lit for a wonderful party. Of course, the incendiaries could light the way for the bombers so they had to be extinguished as soon as possible. Mother cut the string to open the sand bags and Father and I grabbed them and ran round the gardens pouring sand on the bombs to put them out. Soon we were joined byour neighbour, Mr Borthwick, in his First World War tin hat and long black overcoat. With Father in his warm woollen dressing gown and me in my bell bottomed holiday slacks we must have looked an odd trio as we ran about amidst the flames. I hadn't had so much fun in months! Then we went indoors to check that everything was all right. I went into the spare room and everything looked fine until I noticed a small hole in the ceiling and there lying cosily in the middle of the bed was a bomb that had not ignited. How lucky we had been. Our house might have caught fire while we were busy outside.
Meanwhile Tony was playing his part by working as an orderly at Greenwich Hospital. And across the river on the other side of London a boy I had not yet met, called Derrick was driving an ambulance. He was 18 years old and he was out every night amidst the falling bombs, often having to dig people out of the rubble before he could get them in the ambulance and take them to hospital. He, and Rescue workers like him, were the heroes and heroines of the Blitz.
We occasionally entertained in our shelter. Father would sometimes bring in a poor old 鈥楳rs Sniffkins鈥� whom he had found alone in her house and we would have tea and biscuits and forget the bombs.
One Saturday afternoon Mother defied Hitler by deciding to have a little tea party. Her friends arrived in their fur coats and hats and sat round eating a tea of home made scones, pre-war strawberry jam and our entire butter ration. It felt like the peaceful l930s again, but the party broke up early as everyone had to get home to fill flasks and make sandwiches ready for a night in the shelter or under the dining room table.
I spent Christmas Day l940 on duty in the Control Room - a completely peaceful day spent playing innumerable games of table tennis and reading. But a few days after Christmas we once again saw the lights of Hell in the sky as central London burned and many beautiful buildings were destroyed.
During the Blitz on London there were 57 consecutive nights of bombing and raids continued more spasmodically until April l94l. People slept in their shelters by night and each morning they emerged looking neat and clean and set off for work. Their route was often hampered by a cordoned off unexploded bomb or a fractured gas main, but they got there eventually. As I made my way down to Lewisham I would pass milkmen and postmen making their deliveries to any house that had a front door still standing. In every High Street boarded up windows and doors bore the defiant sign "Business as Usual". London was never defeated.

Chapter 3 Plymouth l941

Soon after Christmas Father received an invitation which he had to consider very carefully. A friend of his, a Plymouth business man owned a small farm in Plympton, run by a farm manager. He told Father that he feared his farm manager would soon be called up and he asked Father to come and run the farm for him. A slogan of the day was 鈥榙ig for victory鈥� and Father was very keen to help the war effort in this way. He was due for retirement from the bank, and he loved working on the land, so he accepted the offer. In the spring of 1941 we set off to live in part of our friends house in Plympton. This was such a war time thing to do, people were always moving around and living in temporary accommodation 鈥� it was like a great game of musical chairs.
On the afternoon of our arrival I stood at my bedroom window and looked down at the garden. A little sparkling stream ran between banks covered with a great profusion of daffodils and narcissi swaying in the breeze. It was a flower scented fairyland. After dinner that night we were all stunned to hear the sinister drone of heavy planes and the sound of falling bombs. We went to the front door and saw the sickeningly familiar red sky with macabre flames dancing and weaving in the wind. Plymouth was the target for that night.
The next morning I phoned Plymouth City Council offices and, explaining that I knew something about housing the homeless, offered my services as a Billeting Officer. The day after that a council employee who lived in Plympton called for me in his car and drove me into Plymouth and up to a large empty house standing in its own grounds - the newly opened Billeting Office. Here I was sat behind a large table and told to get on with it. Of course there were already a Chief Billeting Officer and his Deputy, who had contingency plans prepared. In those early days I sat at my table taking particulars from bombed out people applying for accommodation and I did this all day from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m. without a break. The bombing of Plymouth was pitiless. Each night more people were rendered homeless and came to us for help. They sank gratefully on to the chair in front of me, red eyed, dry mouthed and covered in dust. One particularly dishevelled and wild-haired woman leant across the table and smiled at me confidentially as if she were about to tell me a huge joke. "My baby was killed in my arms last night" was what she said.
Each night I returned to the peace and tranquillity of Plympton where I would perhaps saddle one of our host鈥檚 horses and ride up the quiet lanes leading to the moors or I would go into the garden to pick great bunches of daffodils to fill vases all over the house. The contrast between my days and nights was unbelievable.
I said before that I was not particularly frightened of the raids in London. My routine then had been to come home from work and wait for the raids to start. Now my routine was to hurry down to the city centre each evening to catch a bus to take me away from the raids. Often I had a long wait for a bus and I was scared. As evening approached a feeling of menace and dread seemed to fill the air. As the bus trundled along the road to Plympton it would pass little bands of women and children trudging out of the city, probably with blankets and food loaded onto an old pram, just walking until they could find an empty barn or even a quiet corner of a field where they hoped they could sleep in safety. It was a timeless picture of innocents fleeing from danger. They could have lived a hundred years earlier or they could have lived today, for we see them still nearly every night on our television screens. Man's inhumanity to man continues unabated.
It was quickly decided to offer evacuation to mothers with young babies and billets were arranged for them in Cornwall. I had the job of escorting one party of those poor bewildered women. We went by train over the Tamar Bridge and into the wild, alien land which was Cornwall. I'm sure that most of the women would never have travelled far from Plymouth and Cornwall was, and still is, to all intents a foreign country. Cornishmen want it so. The women sat tensely clutching their babies and their bundles of belongings, their forlorn faces showing the anxiety they felt not only about where they were going, but about those they had left behind to endure the bombs. We travelled deep into Cornwall until we reached our destination and by the time I and the other escort had got the women to their allotted billets it was getting dark and, peering round the little dimly lit houses, it was hard to see what the rooms were really like. At least they had a bed and a safe roof over their heads, but as each woman stepped nervously into her new home and the door was closed behind her I felt as if I were abandoning her. The village was so deeply silent and the dark was so impenetrable.
Things were still busy in the Billeting Office on the day of my 2lst birthday. The Deputy Billeting Officer was Mrs. Morley, a plump, cheerful middle-aged woman, and when she heard that it was my birthday she insisted that we go out at lunchtime to celebrate. The office had by now moved to premises nearer to the city centre, so we hadn't far to pick our way over the rubble before we found an old, grim Victorian pub. Its windows were all boarded up, but when we pushed the door open we were greeted by the landlord standing in his shirt sleeves behind the dusty bar. Behind him hung a picture of our King and Queen draped in grimy red, white and blue bunting and on the walls were large posters reminding us that "Careless talk costs lives" and to "Keep it under your hat". Around the room sat a few glum men in cloth caps silently drinking their beer. Mrs Morley bought us each a port and lemon, about the only drink thought suitable for ladies at that time, and we drank to the auspicious day. We felt relaxed and talked and laughed together until we realised how much we were disturbing the disapproving silence. We felt that we should have been whispering as if we were in church and we lowered our voices accordingly. I told Mrs Morley that my parents had bought me a portable gramophone and, amazingly, we found a music shop open and she bought me a gramophone record. Then she gave me a birthday kiss on the cheek and we returned to work, to the queues and the stunned faces and the trembling hands.
That evening my parents and I took my lovely new gramophone up on to the moors and we sat there in the long spring twilight playing my records.
The Blitz on Plymouth stopped and life in the Billeting Office settled down to a quiet administrative routine. I was in charge of the Assessments department 鈥� where we assessed the amount each billetee should pay for their accommodation. I dealt with all the department鈥檚 queries and correspondence, which I enjoyed. Also in the department were Norah Lapworthy (or Lappy) who was thin and nervous and obviously aching with loneliness and anxiety for her husband away in the Army; Hilda, a beautiful woman with huge, tragic eyes, and Gwen, who was rather upper crust. During the war one often worked with people who had never worked before in their lives and who had spent their days walking the dogs and playing Bridge. Gwen was a bit like that, but she was plump and sporty and had a great sense of humour. Oh, and then there was Billy who was l7 and had a schoolboy crush on me. I usually got to the office early in the morning, but Billy was always there waiting for me to throw his arms round me and smother me with enthusiastic young kisses. Billy was just like a puppy, with big trusting brown eyes, a wide grin and arms and legs that flew in all directions. The girls were always begging me to agree to go out with him. "Do go just once", they said, "It would make him so happy". Indeed he was loveable, but I prudishly maintained that he was too young and that I shouldn't lead him on. Hilda's recent history was tragic. There had been marital trouble and upheavals, and she had quite recently lost a baby. Now her husband was in the RAF serving as an air gunner 鈥� perhaps the most hazardous position of all the hazardous positions in a bomber. Hilda's eyes were haunted, but she was not one to sit at home and mope. She was determined that she and I should take steps to improve our social life and somehow she got us invitations to a dance at the Army Officers Training School.
On the day of the dance we went out in our lunch hour to try to find something to liven up our old dresses and there in the middle of the boarded up shops and piles of bricks we found a florists shop, a wonderful little oasis of colour and scent. We decided on something really glamorous and bought an orchid each to put in our hair.
The dance was lovely; the orchids were a great success and Hilda and I felt quite like the belles of the ball. We were surrounded by a group of eager young men with healthily rosy faces and loud "I'm soon going to be an officer" voices. Then a quiet, older man in his early thirties emerged. His name was Monty and he and I were to become good friends. When the dance was over and we left the bright dance hall the view was eerie. In the moonlight the remains of the bombed buildings reached accusingly to the sky. There were no whole buildings and absolutely no landmarks. Hand in hand Monty and I set off down the nearest road and luckily found that we were going in the right direction. On that night and on other occasions when I was out late in Plymouth I slept at Lappy's. She was very solicitous and it was nice to come back to a comfortable bed in her big house in the middle of the silent, ruined city.

At this time the phrase "There's a war on, you know" was used to explain or excuse everything. It was most often used by shopkeepers who had become all powerful as they watched the queues of patient housewives, clutching their ration books and waiting stoically outside their shops. How we fawned and wheedled in order to get a quarter of a pound of broken biscuits or an off-ration sausage and it was annoying to be told "There's a war on" when one had been exerting all one's charms to get a bit of under the counter offal. "Under the counter" - another war time expression. Shopkeepers always kept something hidden away for their favoured customers.
My parents and I had moved house again as we really needed a home of our own. Think of the Three Bears, Red Riding Hood, Snow White - our new home, a cottage on the edge of a wood, could have provided the setting for any of these stories. It stood back from a narrow lane which led up to the moor alongside a stream running with milky white water. The milkiness of the stream was caused by china clay which escaped from the huge excavations cutting into the moor. The cottage was cosy, lit by oil lamps and furnished with some of my parents' favourite furniture sent from Lee. I regarded it as an idyllic little place.
Mother did good work with the W.V.S. in Plymouth, being in charge of a sewing group who sorted, mended and made over clothing donated for the bombed out and homeless, a job well suited to her talents. Many parcels of beautiful clothes were sent from America and my mother was disappointed by the very sparing way in which the authorities handed these out. Always saving for an even rainier day, I suppose. Father kept chickens, ducks and rabbits, grew vegetables and sawed wood. He joined the Mounted Home Guard, going out by himself to patrol a section of the moor and to look out for spies or saboteurs who might have been dropped by parachute on this lonely spot. This sounded so much like a John Buchan adventure story that we all rather joked about it, yet it was something that did happen in secluded parts of the country. It was known for German agents to be apprehended by the Home Guard or by a lone farmer armed with a pitchfork, so Father's patrols were necessary as part of the vast network of national defence.
I myself had settled down happily in Plymouth with my friends, but it was war time and everything was transient. Monty got his commission and left Plymouth and Billy was eagerly awaiting his call-up papers. I was told that there would be a job for me at the Billeting Office for the duration of the war, if I wanted it. I would be in what was called a Reserved Occupation and therefore exempt from call up. I said I would think about it.
Like all open offices we had our share of nutters who liked to come to see us on some pretext just to get in out of the cold. Our most frequent visitor was the Professor, a poor old down and out, whose filthy garments were kept together with string and safety pins. He was obviously an educated man and he liked to sit by the fire and lecture us in the most pedantic tones on any subject that came into his head. One day as he sat droning away a large bug crawled out from his grimy shirt collar and started to make its slow way up his neck. We all saw it and tried to hide our grins. The bug made a circular tour of his wobbly adam's apple and then found firmer ground in the stubble on his chin. Still the Professor talked on as the bug balanced on his nose and by this time we were all openly laughing. The old man was not amused. With great dignity he told us how ill-mannered we were and, before we could explain, he marched out, the bug still clinging precariously to his wispy hair. I was ashamed. What sort of war work was this, to sit in a warm office and laugh at an unfortunate old man? The next day I went to the Recruiting Office and volunteered for the WAAF which, in terms of putting a dent in Hitler's war machine, was not a good move.

Chapter 4 WAAF - Innsworth. 1942-1943

My choice of the WAAF was based on a very appealing recruiting poster, showing a beautiful WAAF gazing at Spitfires flying in a blue sky, while in the background an airman in full flying kit smiled cheerfully. This gave the impression that anyone joining the WAAF would be doing something really useful towards keeping the boys up there in the air. At the Recruiting Office I was recommended to join the Administrative or "Admin" branch. "What would I have to do?", I asked. "Oh, welfare, discipline - you know, admin", was the vague reply. "It would suit you and you will get quick promotion in Admin", she added as an incentive. So that was what I agreed to do. It was early December and I was told that I would be called up in January, so Mother and I decided to have a little holiday in London before then. We stayed at the Strand Palace Hotel and we discovered that London had recovered wonderfully from the Blitz. Theatres, cinemas and restaurants were still open and we had a lovely few days. Kay joined us one evening and somehow missed the last train home. We had a very giggly night with her sharing our hotel room and creeping out before the chambermaid brought our morning tea.
On a cold January morning I sat in a train from Plymouth to Gloucester on my way to the WAAF Depot at Innsworth. I was 21 years old, but I felt like a 10 year old going to boarding school for the first time.
How can I describe RAF Innsworth?. I expect you will have seen films about Prisoner of War camps - row upon row of grey Nissen huts, long grey concrete paths, a huge bare parade ground, all surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by look-out towers. Well Innsworth was just like that except for the barbed wire and look-out towers. Actually I'm not sure about the barbed wire - I think there was some of that too. Innsworth was vast and filled with hundreds of girls. On the evening of arrival we were issued with a huge mug and our "irons" (knife, fork and spoon in a little canvas bag). These we had to take with us whenever we went to the cookhouse (or Mess). We were taken to our hut and allocated an iron bedstead. Stacked on this was a mattress, made up of three separate parts, called biscuits as they were brown and square. On top of the biscuits was a stack of bedding. Four blankets and two rough cotton sheets were very neatly folded and wrapped round with a fifth folded blanket. There was also a very thin, very lumpy pillow. Beds had to be stacked like this each morning and could not be made up until after 5 p.m. Beside each bed was a locker and a small mat. There was a hook behind the bed on which uniform was to be hung. This area was one's "bed space", one's own tiny home.
In each hut were 30 beds arranged alternately head or foot to the wall down each side and in the centre were two iron stoves with chimney stacks going out through the roof. These stoves became evil beings when one attempted to light them and, as this could not be done until after 5 o'clock, it was around 8.00 p.m. before they began to glow warmly. Then there was no stopping them and the air around them shimmered with heat. We always got into bed in the most glorious fug, our senses dulled by the heady warmth. But something nasty happened in the night. The stoves burnt themselves out. When the tannoy clicked on in the morning and a maddeningly cheerful voice woke us with "It is 06.l5 hours. 鈥榃akey, wakey!鈥�, we realised that our noses were frozen and our feet were like blocks of ice. We all learned to get dressed in bed, getting on everything except our jackets and shoes without disturbing the bed clothes. Then we staggered out into the black, black morning and across to the ablution hut, with its cold concrete floor and long row of wash basins 鈥� a trough running under them to take away any overflow of water. Here we had a sketchy wash and cleaned our teeth. The ablutions had their own smell, composed of stagnant water, damp flannels, not quite clean girls' bodies and cheap soap. Dawn didn't exactly break, it sort of sheepishly appeared as we grabbed our mugs and irons and made for the Mess. The day had begun..
The first week of my WAAF life is all confusion in my mind. We were marched from one end of the camp to the other for lectures, medical examinations, films. We were issued with our uniforms, but not before we had been told that it was not too late, we could go home if we wanted to. What a cruel temptation. Each hut had a Corporal in charge who, like a sheep dog with a flock of particularly dim-witted sheep, somehow got us to line up in threes and march (or shuffle) from place to place. These N.C.O.s were extremely smart and it must be said, personable. Their brass buttons were blindingly bright, you could see your face in their black, shining shoes. They had clear, carrying voices. I was dismayed to discover that these well scrubbed, well pressed girls were ADMIN! Was this going to be my future in the WAAF I wondered. (Yes, I'm afraid it was.)
I had thought that I was ready for a jolly life in the WAAF, but I wasn't really. I had enjoyed some nice evenings in Plymouth with my friends, but I had spent many more quiet ones in the Three Bears' cottage in the trees. At week-ends I relished the tranquil beauty of the woods and lanes of Plympton. I had come to appreciate solitude. It was confusing to be surrounded by crowds of chattering girls for every minute of the day and night. When we had any time to ourselves I sat on my bed and read and when, during that first week, we were allowed out of camp for a few hours I didn't wait to see what anyone else was doing, but rushed off to explore by myself.
At the end of the week our intake of new recruits was sent to Morecambe in Lancashire for the next stage of our training. On a depressing January morning we boarded the train at Gloucester, each of us clutching a paper bag containing what the cookhouse described as "the un-consumed portion of the day's ration" - two spam sandwiches and a NAAFI bun! The war news was grim. There was fighting and death all over the world. Since the Japanese bombing of the American fleet at Pearl Harbour America had joined the war and, with Britain, had declared war on Japan. Now the Far East had become a new and terrifying battle zone, with Manila and the Philippines already captured by Japan and the fall of Singapore. A deadly battle was being waged in the heat of the North African desert. Our brave Merchant Navy was continuously under attack from German U boats, causing much loss of men and ships. The island of Malta was besieged. Our own brief, blazing Battle of Britain had been fought and won by boys it seemed like a hundred years ago and now, viewed from the train window, the country they had saved had a mournful and benighted look. Thin, wind blown snow covered the land and the sky was an unchanging dull grey. The journey took all day, with much shunting into sidings and unexplained stops. I got a corner seat in the carriage and sat there reading a very interesting novel without saying a single word to anyone during the whole journey
At Morecambe we were marched in the pitch dark of the black-out to our billets in a row of tall Victorian houses, which had been holiday boarding houses before the war and were still presided over by their owners, the dreaded seaside landladies of those days, renowned for rules and regulations and no hanky-panky. There was a great deal of clamouring to be allowed to share a room with particular friends and the N.C.O.s did their best to oblige. As I had not had the foresight to make a friend on the train I was left to last and found myself sharing with two extremely rough girls in a tiny, freezing attic room. They took no notice of me, but lay in bed telling each other extremely crude dirty jokes and laughing uproariously late into the night.
There were about twenty of us in our billet and we had to do certain chores to help the landlady. The worst one was peeling potatoes. Each evening two of us went down to the dimly lit cellar and sat on stools peeling bucketsful of spuds. Poor little Cinderellas! I can't imagine what we did in Morecambe for a month. I can remember only marching up and down the front in the breathtakingly cold air and doing P.E. I liked to wander off alone sometimes, but I did become a lot more sociable. We were all friends together in the billet. Although we were an oddly assorted lot we were united by the same three wishes - to be warm, to have something to eat that wasn't potatoes and to get away from Morecambe. At the end of the month came the day when we heard where we were being sent to begin our real life in the WAAF and - horror of horrors - I was one of about 15 girls (all Admin) who were being sent back to Innsworth as permanent staff. We were bitterly disappointed as we had hoped to get to an operational station and really be part of Air Force life. Of course we should have realised that with hundreds of recruits coming every week a tremendous amount of Admin work was needed to cope with them. We were being sent where we were most needed, so to Innsworth we went.
On arrival at a new station the first thing one had was an FFI (Free from infection) examination which we all regarded as a matter of course, but I was kept back after the examination and told that my hair was infested with lice. No words can describe the mortification and disgrace I felt. Nowadays lice have come to love nice little children鈥檚 heads with hair smelling cleanly of Baby Shampoo, but in those days vermin of all sorts were the enemies of the poor. They bred in crumbling slum buildings where children slept four to a bed and there was not much money for soap and shampoos. I had never before met anyone who had lice. I blamed my unsavoury room mates in Morecambe, but I could have got them anywhere. I didn't know the other Admin girls very well as none of them had been in my billet in Morecambe so I hoped they hadn't noticed what had happened. I was sure that if they knew they would think I was dirty and would shun me ever after. I had to report for treatment to a medical room some distance across the camp and I crept off after lunch without telling anyone where I was going. The treatment took a long time, involving a lot of scrubbing and the application of much foul smelling shampoo. Eventually it was finished, but it was long past tea time and pitch dark when I got outside. I had no torch with me and as one concrete path looks just like another concrete path I had no idea where I was. Suddenly out of the darkness someone emerged and threw her arms round me crying, "Oh, thank goodness I've found you. We knew you had gone to a medical hut somewhere, but we didn't know where it was. We've been looking everywhere鈥�.
As I had missed tea my shadowy friend suggested that we went to the Mess for supper, something I didn't do usually, as supper consisted of bread and margarine, with perhaps a little jam, and cocoa so thick that a spoon could stand up in it. Some of my colleagues were sitting at one of the long tables and they all called out, "Oh there you are! Come over here, come and sit with us". They made room for me in their midst, sitting close and demonstrating clearly that they didn't mind about the lice. A little ray of happiness poked its way through the gloomy night, for there was something here that I recognised from my school days. It was looking after one's own, it was a staunch unspoken sympathy, it was solidarity. I stopped reading books after that night and if ever I felt tempted to sneak off on my own I resisted the temptation and would call out brightly, "Anyone want to come into town with me?".
"Town" was Cheltenham, suffering a bit from war-time austerity, but still beautiful with its wide tree lined roads and its many fine houses. Here we went to dances and concerts and visited the Forces canteens run by very genteel Cheltenham ladies. Gloucester was also quite near to Innsworth, but it was a dreary place despite its ancient cathedral and its childhood's association with Beatrice Potter's Tailor. We went to Gloucester only for the Chinese Laundry. Today nearly every town has a Chinese restaurant. Then most towns had a Chinese laundry. At Gloucester it operated from a small terrace house in a back street and there we took our collars to be starched. When we rang the bell the door was opened just wide enough to emit a billow of strange smelling steam and for us to see dimly through the vapour a crowd of little faces, white and shiny like the suet puddings that our mothers used to boil in a cloth kept specially for the purpose. We handed in our tickets and the little faces vanished into the steam then reappeared, with black gappy smiles slicing into the suet puddings, as they handed us our collars most beautifully starched and ironed. The collars were of course purgatory to wear, but they were smart and that was all that mattered.
We had not been very long at Innsworth when the station was honoured with a Royal Visit. We understood that Queen Mary, the widow of King George V, was coming to see us. You cannot imagine the amount of cleaning, polishing and scrubbing that went on, nor how terrified we were of bringing shame on the Royal Air Force by having one stray hair out of place. We had to line up outside our Mess, as H.R.H. was going to look in there and then get in her car to drive past us. Of course we paraded at least an hour early and while we waited the Mess door was opened for a few minutes. What a wonderful sight! The tables were covered with white cloths on which plates of sandwiches and cakes and many coloured jellies were laid out for us. What a feast we were going to have! At last we were brought to attention and Queen Mary was driven past us. We saw an imperious old lady dressed in dove grey in the style of 40 years earlier. She was beautiful, with a flawless complexion and clear blue eyes. She regarded us all without a trace of emotion. She seemed neither interested nor bored. Her look was neither critical nor approving. But she was a Queen. She represented England and all that it stood for. Her presence brought a lump to the throat and her visit was quite definitely good for morale, strange as that may seem. She was gone and we couldn't wait for tea time. When we entered the Mess some time later we were stunned. The white table cloths were gone and so was all the party food. Where was it? Surely the cooks hadn't scoffed the lot? Had it gone to the Officers Mess? Had it been a mirage? We had a lot to learn about royal visits.
We all settled down to life at Innsworth, making the best of what we considered to be a boring routine. At first we trainee Admins worked in Reception, booking in the poor bewildered recruits who had arrived straight from home. You would have thought that, being so new ourselves, we would have behaved in a kindly way. Not a bit of it. We all acted superior and bossy. We took the recruits to the ablutions, but as soon as they got out their nice new bars of soap to have a wash, we bellowed at them to hurry up and get outside. Then we marched them to the Mess, where they could hardly drink a cup of tea before we bawled at them to line up outside again. Once I heard someone remark about me "Blooming cheek. She only looks about 14".
The good thing about working in Reception was that we were on shifts, 24 hours on and 24 hours off. Some of us had to be on duty all night, because trains carrying recruits came into Gloucester at all hours. We were meant to sleep for some of the time on our days off, but we stayed in bed until after the Orderly Officer's 10 o'clock inspection of the huts, during which we feigned a deep and exhausted sleep, then we got up, dressed and were out of the camp before you could say "knife". We had to get going as we had embarked on a Grand Tour of the Cotswolds. We went somewhere different each day and we saw these centuries old little towns and villages at their deserted and silent best. We hitch hiked everywhere, mostly in old lorries with red hot thumping engines. We sat, two or three of us cramped in the driver's cab, looking down on the hedgerows full of delicate dog roses and honeysuckle and out over England's verdant land, made all the more poignantly beautiful by the dangers that threatened it. How very fortunate we were never to see enemy tanks advancing over our green fields or to hear the sound of an invading army marching down our village streets.
One evening in Reception an exciting occurrence broke the monotony. I received a message that someone was waiting to see me in the Main Guard Room. There I was much surprised to find - Monty. Evidently gaining courage from his still new officer's uniform, he had walked into the Guard Room and demanded to see me. I was amazed. ("Some day my Prince will come".) Monty was in an Army camp quite near Innsworth and so on our days off I did more of the Cotswold tour with him. Only we couldn't hitch hike, but had to travel everywhere by train or bus because Monty was an officer and we had to eat in nice hotels. Tewkesbury will always be Monty's place in my memory. In a hotel there we had a Sunday lunch almost as good as a pre-war one and after lunch we walked by the river and sat on the wide grassy bank. There was such a feeling in the air of the Sundays of my childhood, warm and quiet and calm. In my mind Monty sits there still looking at the river and at the old town deep in its Sunday afternoon slumber. He had fallen silent, lost in thought. A man, not a boy. No illusions. He disappeared soon after that but, as he was in the Intelligence Corps, this was not too surprising. I thought I would one day get a letter from somewhere overseas, but I never did.
Mary was an Innsworth colleague who became a life-long friend. We were on the same shift for some time and she often took me home with her to Stoke Prior, near Birmingham, hitching a lift of course. Leslie, her husband, owned a small brush making factory, which in the course of time was to grow into a very big model factory run on egalitarian lines and his brushes are now known world wide. Leslie was older than Mary and I think he sometimes found the pair of us rather irritating, with our WAAF talk and our WAAF jokes. I can see him now striding away over the Malvern Hills while Mary and I lagged behind chattering and giggling. Mary was to lead a very full and interesting life, but she is as unspoilt and genuine now as she was at 2l.
I well remember the day when I returned from a 48 hour leave. As I walked into the hut I was greeted with "The Yanks are in Cheltenham!" (The Vikings have landed). Whizzo! Now our Convent-like existence was well and truly over. We all had American boy friends and mine was called Will. He was a pleasant faced amiable young man from Maine. Like most Americans he was very easily friendly, though I couldn't help imagining that before he left America he had been given a book entitled something like "How to avoid leading English girls up the Garden Path". He was always saying things like "We've got two cars, but that doesn't mean anything. Every family in America has two cars". Or "My Mother has a washing machine, but then every house in America has a washing machine". Then "We must remember that we are two young people far from home. Things could look different in our own surroundings". Quite right, Will!
By this time I was a Corporal, having passed the promotion exam. It was very easy. We had to know all about Air Force law and discipline and how to run an Admin office. We had to give a short talk on a subject of our own choosing and we had to demonstrate our ability to drill a squad, getting it to do all sorts of complicated manoeuvres and giving the orders correctly. I do not wish to sound boastful, but I was red hot at drill. (Not a skill that I can claim has stood me in good stead for the rest of my life, but never mind). I got 99% for drill and I was very angry with myself for dropping a point!
Now the Nissan hut had become 鈥榟ome sweet home鈥� to me - Homely it certainly was. After Lights Out at 10.15 we would sit in a circle round one of the stoves, wearing our WAAF issue wincyette pyjamas with our great coats round our shoulders. The homeliness might be accentuated by some washing draped around the stove - thick woolly vests and navy blue knickers with elastic round the legs (called black-outs). On top of the stove an old fashioned billy can would be set to boil. Leaf tea was thrown into the boiling water and a good, strong brew resulted. There was a girl called Nan who by day was a worldly Glaswegian, but by night became Celtic and fey. She sang in a voice to send shivers down the spine - "It's aye that I'm longing for my ain folk", "Over the sea to Skye" and that poignant lament for Bonnie Prince Charlie, "Will ye no come back again? Better loved ye canna be. Will ye no come back again?". I imagine most girls were thinking of someone closer to their hearts than was the bonny Prince, for tears were welling and sniffs were audible. Then Nan got out her ouija board and by the dim light of a few torches we excitedly gathered round, each of us hoping for a message from the spirit world.
Mornings in the hut were much more relaxed than in our Rookie days when the tannoy had woken us at 6.15 a.m. Now we were able to ignore the call to "Wakey wakey" and came to life at about 7 o'clock. We didn't crawl over to the Mess for breakfast any more, but sat up in bed to enjoy our Yankie spoils. A can of delicious orange juice, a can of peanuts and perhaps some chocolate cookies made a good breakfast and those who smoked then lay back and puffed blissfully on their Camel cigarettes. The Americans were extremely generous and seemed to have an endless supply of goodies to share. Children soon cottoned on to this and crowded round any G.I. they saw. "Got any gum, Chum?" they chanted and this became a saying of the time.
There was one American for whom I could have fallen in a big way, given the chance. He was handsome and sexy and he had the added attraction of having been a New York detective, a "G man"! A surfeit of Gangster films had made this profession seem glamorous to me. He seemed to like me, but then he disappeared, as people often did. I saw him again at a dance. When last seen he was a sergeant and now he was in officer's uniform. I hurried across the floor to congratulate him and then turned to smile at his partner, but her black, hostile glare really shook me. I didn't like the look of her either. "Tart" was the word that sprang to mind. She was a civilian in a flimsy dress, very high heels and nylon stockings (who gave her those?). My hero was pleasant enough, but obviously eager for me to go away, if only to stop the Tart from kicking his shins I suppose. I was so incensed by the supercilious look she gave me as I retreated that I complained to my friends, "It's not fair. How can we compete with these civvy girls with their long hair and their pretty clothes". So we hit on a plan and wrote to ask our mothers to send us all we needed.
We arrived at the next dance carrying bulky brown paper parcels (the ubiquitous plastic carrier bag not having been invented then). We hurried to the Ladies Cloakroom and locked ourselves in the toilets where we opened our parcels, took out the contents and with a lot of huffing and puffing transformed ourselves into glamorous civilians. Well, so we hoped, but somehow the pre-war dresses our mothers had sent us seemed childish and old fashioned and we could hardly walk in the unaccustomed high heels, let alone dance in the rather jiggy American style. Very energetic dancers, the Americans, despite the stern notices around the dance hall warning "No Jiving. No Jitterbugs". We kept up the transformation for a week or two and then decided that it was not worth the effort. A good thing, too. We would have been in terrible trouble if we had been found out. We had to wear our uniform at all times.
Another war time Christmas was approaching and Will was anxious to know what present I would like from America. I knew at once. "A rubber hot water bottle, please", I asked. All rubber goods were in short supply and hot water bottles were unobtainable. It was freezing in the hut at night and I always woke up shivering. Will was a bit put out by my choice and tried to tempt me with other luxuries that he could obtain for me, but I wouldn't change my mind.
Just in time for Christmas the wonderful smooth, soft hot water bottle arrived. Will's mother had put in another gift, some very nice linen handkerchiefs - a bit old maidish, but I suppose she thought that a girl who wanted nothing so much in life as a rubber hot water bottle would appreciate something like that. I did like the hankies and the hot water bottle was absolute bliss.
Will was a sweet person, but he did have one irritating habit. Always when we met he greeted me with, "Hi! What's noo?". Would there ever be anything "noo" at the WAAF Depot? I ask you.
Actually in the new year of 1943 there was an innovation - the Detention Hut. So many girls on the permanent staff were confined to camp and on "Jankers" (extra duties) for all manner of misdemeanours that it was decided to keep them all together in one hut where they could be guarded. They were taken to work each day and did nothing but work, eat and sleep. And who better to look after them than an Admin N.C.O.? We took it in turns to do a week at a time in the Detention Hut and I was dreading my turn. When it arrived I found that most of the girls had done nothing more wicked than overstay their leave because they wanted more time with their husbands or boyfriends. A number of them were older than I and they were very motherly towards me, obviously seeing at once that I had no aptitude for the life of a jailer. They were always warning me about possible break-outs, for there were some hard cases amongst them, and devising elaborate schemes for me to foil any escape attempts. Fortunately no-one got away while I was in charge, but that was more by luck than anything else. The most worrying time was when I had to take them over to the Mess for supper in the pitch dark and, once there, the lights were so dim on account of black-out regulations that I found it difficult to see them all. One night I was peering short sightedly into the gloom when a voice at my elbow asked anxiously, "What's the matter, Corporal?". "I can't quite see ......" I began feebly. Immediately my protector bellowed down the room, "Don't keep wandering orff. All keep together. The Corporal can't see yer". Whereupon my charges meekly picked up their mugs of cocoa and came to sit right by me.
I really had to do something about my life. I had been on the permanent staff at Innsworth for over a year and a year in war time was a very long time indeed. I decided to write and ask for a compassionate posting, claiming that my "aged parents" needed me near them. There were some RAF stations quite near Plymouth and I hoped for the best. I knew how to write an official letter, which had to be addressed to the station commander, beginning:
Sir, I have the honour to request ...
and ending ...I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient Servant......
About a month later I was informed that a posting had come through for me to RAF Sidmouth in South Devon. My request had been granted! I believed in God, but I didn't find it easy to believe in those mysterious beings in Central Posting who moved us around like pawns on a chess board. This was like a miracle.
I had made some good friends at Innsworth, but the work had been dull, repetitive and undemanding. I had hoped to do a bit more than that in the WAAF and so I left the Depot without regret.


Chapter 5 WAAF - Sidmouth. 1943-44.

On arrival at Sidmouth I booked in at my new billet, surprised to find that it was a beautiful little Regency house that before the war had been the Royal Glen Hotel. "Royal" I was told because Queen Victoria had stayed there as a baby. I went out to explore and walked along Manor Road past gardens overflowing with hydrangeas, brilliantly blue and pink. At the end of the road was the sea, sparkling joyously and edged by distinctive salmon pink cliffs. Seagulls cried overhead and children skipped along the Esplanade, followed by their mothers carrying shopping baskets instead of gas masks. I found a little cafe and was served with tea and tiny war-time cakes. And I was enchanted and entrapped. Sidmouth is such an elegant and refined lady, but underneath all that quiet respectability she is a fatal seductress and few who have known her can escape from her charms.
RAF Sidmouth was not like other enclosed RAF Stations. The Air Ministry had requisitioned nearly all the hotels in the town and these were used to house the Medical Training Depot. The imposing Victoria Hotel, where the rich and famous had enjoyed luxury holidays only a few years earlier, was now the Depot's Headquarters; the elegant Riviera Hotel on the Esplanade was the Officers' Mess, the Torbay was the Sergeants' Mess and the Belmont was for Airmen. All the other hotels had lecture rooms on the ground floor with sleeping quarters above, WAAFs and airmen in separate hotels of course. I was soon moved from the Royal Glen to be in charge of the WAAF quarters at the Westcliff Hotel and was thereafter known as "Corporal Crowe of the Westcliff". Trainee Medical Orderlies did a five week course. It was concentrated and hard work for both Instructors and trainees and the Medical Training Depot (or M.T.D.) was a very efficient and well run Unit. I no longer resented being an Admin. In fact I loved my work. I was in charge of all the girls who were billeted at the Westcliff and I was responsible for the hotel generally. I trotted happily up and down stairs and along corridors and into bathrooms, delighting in the gleaming polished brightness of the place, all thanks to my excessively bossy notices pinned up everywhere, detailing the cleaning duties to be done by each girl. I made the rest room pretty with pictures from the comforts fund, rugs from the store and bowls of flowers and greenery from the garden or countryside. I opened the windows to the balmy west country air and I thought everything was beautiful. I had a bedroom to myself with a blue washbasin in the corner (what luxury!) and a view of the sea.
It was my job to see that the trainees in my care got to the correct place on time so there was a lot of "Fall in in threes. By the left quick march" going on as they were marched everywhere. They also had 20 minutes drill before classes every morning. I positioned myself outside the Westcliff's garden gate and marched them up and down the quiet road. For me it was rather boring and sometimes I day dreamed as they marched. One day I forgot to give the order "About turn" and was alarmed to see the squad marching doggedly up Peak Hill and into the distance. Like the charging Light Brigade, "Theirs not to reason why". I bellowed "About turn" at the top of my voice and was relieved to hear their faint response as they chanted "Check, one two three, Forward one two three". Bless their hearts, they came back to me. It was important that they should march smartly as we had a C.O.'s parade and inspection on the cricket field once a week. This was followed by a march round the town, led by the Depot's band and watched by the Sidmouth inhabitants. The Band also led the Sunday Parade to the Parish Church. This was for C of E personnel. O.D.s (Other Denominations) and Roman Catholics could take themselves to church. I never heard of any arrangements for Jews and one rather Debby girl registered as a Parsee. "It's a sun worshipper, Corporal" she informed me sweetly, so there was no question of a church parade for her. We also went to all the neighbouring towns to parade for "Salute the Soldier" or "Wings for Victory", campaigns to raise money for the Forces. All told we did a lot of marching!
The "Welfare" part of my admin duties was not very onerous because for the most part everyone was well motivated and happy in Sidmouth. I dished out aspirins for minor aches and pains. I got girls into bed when they came in squiffy and incapable from drinking too much rough Devon cider. Known as scrumpy, this was a near lethal brew, about which people were warned, usually without effect. I was there to provide a sympathetic ear on occasions like the one when a girl showed me a photo of a bright faced boy in uniform, with the sorrowful words, "He was such a lovely chap, Corporal, and he went for a Burton". I could never become accustomed to the use of that slang expression to describe the death of a loved one, but I suppose it was easier to say than "He died". And there were so many of them, those "lovely chaps", rank upon rank and "Gone for a Burton" every one.
My first friend in Sidmouth was a girl quite a bit older than myself, called Gladys. I think she must have been a compulsive match-maker for she seemed to pounce on me as just the person she wanted for her schemes. She told me about a Medical Instructor called Derrick Simpson, who was at present on sick leave following a bout of pneumonia. "You will like Derrick", she said confidently. "He's engaged to this girl back home, but I've met her and she's not right for him. He needs someone like you". How could she possibly know that? I was not impressed and, anyway, I had a conscience. I would never go out with a man who was already engaged.
There were a number of Forces Canteens in Sidmouth, run by the kind ladies of the town, and one Saturday afternoon I was helping at one of them. I was in the small kitchen frying mushrooms when Gladys appeared and excitedly called me out of the kitchen to meet - Derrick! Derrick was tall and slim with nice wavy hair shining with Brylcream (the men of the RAF were known as "the Brylcream boys"), but he also looked pale and poorly and didn't have much to say. (Poor man. He was still quite weak from his illness). As for his impression of me - he told me later that I had had a red face and a shiny nose and that I had smelt of frying. Gladys looked on anxiously while we eyed each other without enthusiasm.
Despite the set back Gladys persevered. She asked us to go out in a foursome with her and her boyfriend. It was pleasant enough and after a week or two Derrick asked me to watch a cricket match with him. I must have been a little bit attracted to agree to do such an intensely boring thing! I asked Derrick about his fianc茅e and he confirmed that the engagement had been a mistake and was now over. So we went to the pictures and to a few parties together
Derrick was easy to talk to and because he was interested in all things medical I found myself telling him about an unhappy time in 1940 when I was suffering from anorexia: I saw Derrick's face change with emotion and he said angrily, "Oh, I just wish I had known you in those days". I knew then that he loved me and would always look out for me and try to see that nothing hurt me. I opened my eyes and I saw his good, true heart and I realised that I loved him too and that he was the one. So Gladys, the match-maker, was vindicated.
About this time I had to make a journey to Liverpool on escort duty. One of the WAAF cooks had been absent without leave for some time. She had been picked up by the Air Force police and was at RAF Fazakerley waiting to be collected and escorted back to Sidmouth. I set out cheerfully, accompanied by an airwoman called Elsie, chosen from among the trainees for her serious manner, I should think. Certainly not for her size, as she was tiny. The fact that our prisoner, Lily, might be less than enthusiastic about returning to Sidmouth with us didn't seem to worry me.
It was late by the time we arrived in Liverpool and by the time we got out to Fazacerley it was too late to contact the WAAF Orderly Officer and arrange for our journey back the next day. We had to catch the 9.05 train from Lime Street to London in order to be sure of getting back to Sidmouth the same day. (I was determined to do this as I had a date with Derrick to go to the pictures in the evening - Alice Faye in some dreamy romance I think).
We got up very early, found Lily and had breakfast as soon as we could - It was still dark and, not surprisingly I had not managed to find a WAAF officer to sign a chit to authorise transport down to the station and nothing could be done in the Air Force without a chit. We went to the Guard Room and I tried to cajole the Duty Sergeant into ordering transport for us, but he was infuriatingly unconcerned. No chit, no transport. An Air Force lorry bound for Liverpool drew up at the Guard Room and I begged a lift, but the Sergeant intervened. No chit, no transport. I didn't like being mucked about. "O.K.", I said, "We've got to go, so we'll go to the station by bus". Elsie's face registered horror at this risky plan, especially as we were dependent on our Liverpool born prisoner to tell us which bus to get and where to find the bus stop. The bus came along and I pushed Lily on in front of me and sat between her and the exit. At Lime Street I made her walk in front of me across the station concourse. We reached the barrier with three minutes to spare to catch our train. I was triumphant. We had made it to the train as safely as if we had come by official transport. It was a 鈥榩iece of cake鈥�, as we said in the WAAF. We stood in a little huddle while I unbuttoned my jacket pocket to get out our travel warrant. I heard a thump, looked down to see Lily's heavy respirator where she had dropped it at my feet and turned to see Lily's plump legs going like pistons as she sprinted for freedom. Elsie and I were burdened with our respirators and over-night bags. There was no chance of our catching her. Elsie looked stricken. "Oh Corporal, whatever shall we do?", she cried. I burst out laughing. A whistle sounded and the 9.05 for London began to steam down the line.
Well, perhaps it was a bit careless of us to lose Lily like that, but I was determined to make up for our mistake. We found the Air Force police on the station and told them what had happened, but they were as infuriating as the Sergeant at Fazacerley. "What do you expect us to do about it?", they asked. "You've had your chips". (An Air Force expression with various degrees of meaning. In this case "You are in bad trouble".) "We'll go to the civilian police", I told poor little Elsie.
We found a police station near Lime Street and reported our loss. It must have been a quiet morning for the Liverpool City Police for we were greeted with enthusiasm. A gnarled old Detective Sergeant in a bowler hat and grimy raincoat ushered us into an interview room. Oh yes, he knew Lily; he knew her husband, her brother, her family. He would find her for us. He sat us by the fire and brought us mugs of tea and huge sandwiches of fried liver in off-white bread. They were super. Then we set out in an ancient unmarked van, its open back covered by two tarpaulin curtains.. Bowler hat sat in front with the driver and Elsie and I sat in the back, peeping out through the curtains for a sight of our quarry.
Bowler Hat really did know all about Lily. He knew all her family and friends and he had us running up and down steps and knocking on doors asking for news of her whereabouts. We soon got the hang of detective work and posed as old WAAF friends who were looking Lily up while in Liverpool. There was one moment of excitement, when Bowler Hat spied Lily's brother, but the brother spied Bowler Hat too and took off with the same amazing speed as Lily had exhibited. The poor old detective didn't stand a chance. We took a lunch break at one o'clock. Elsie and I were taken into one of those grim old war-time pubs where we daintily sipped a port and lemon while Bowler Hat and the driver downed two or three pints. Then we set out again, but the impetus seemed to have gone out of the chase and, as dusk began to fall, I decided that we had better get back to London.
Public transport during the war was really wonderful. One could get absolutely anywhere in the British Isles by train or bus, but it did take time and, oh, those seemingly endless night time train journeys. Lights in the carriages were blue and thickly shaded, so reading was impossible. Heavy blinds covered the windows and when the train stopped someone would lift the blind a tiny bit to make sure that the stop was at a station and not in the middle of nowhere. No announcements told passengers that they were approaching a station and worse still, all station names had been removed to confuse enemy spies (it confused a lot of us, too). Most people fell asleep on a night train, so there was much panic and hasty grabbing of kit bags or cases and tumbling out onto the dark platform as they realised just in time that they had arrived at their destination.
There was a nice Army sergeant of the 鈥榲eteran鈥� variety in our carriage and we told him our doleful story. He was sympathetic. "They should have given you handcuffs", he said.
(Heaven forbid! Fancy being dragged across Lime Street station handcuffed to Lily.) There were actually refreshments for sale on the train and the sergeant bought us the inevitable mugs of tea and big pieces of fruit cake, which tasted wonderful.
We arrived in London late, but soon found a Y.W.C.A. hostel in which to spend the night. We were booked in by a gentle, grey haired lady on duty alone in the big building and we told her our story.
"Oh, you poor dears", she said, and dived under the counter to produce a bar of chocolate for each of us. We were discovering that hard luck stories paid off! I had just got to sleep when I felt myself being shaken awake by an anxious faced Elsie, telling me that an air raid was in progress. Then the lady in charge appeared in the dim light, dressed in a sensible dressing gown and ready to show her charges down to the basement. She was typical of the countless middle-aged women who worked in hostels and canteens all over Britain. We were so well looked after during the war, both in the Forces and by the many voluntary organisations.
The next morning Elsie and I started on the last stage of our journey. Actually I didn't expect to get into too much trouble when I got back, but I wasn't looking forward to the comments of the RAF personnel, who could be a bit scathing about the WAAF at times. I needn't have worried. Derrick greeted me as if I had returned from a solo trek to the North Pole and the others made the usual "Oh, you poor kids" remarks.
Some weeks later Lily was returned to us by the RAF police. The next day she was on duty in the Mess at lunch time. She looked a bit embarrassed as she served me with a dollop of grey mashed potato. "I'm sorry, Corp. I hope I didn't get you into trouble", she said. Secretly I sympathised with Lily. I couldn't see that it would have made a vast difference to the war effort if she had stayed at home cooking for her husband and Mum and brother instead of cooking for us in Sidmouth.
In the WAAF a lot of time and energy was devoted to retaining the services of those who were disinclined to stay. No-one was pleased when a young girl with a very bad reputation was posted to Sidmouth. She was tough and belligerent and 17 years old. She was confined to camp and on seven days "Jankers". Each evening the Duty N.C.O. had to keep a sharp eye on her as she was likely to bunk. One evening she was doing her Jankers, which comprised of scrubbing the Admin office floor, and I was sitting watching over her with my feet up on a chair to escape the soap suds. Outside the sky was a wonderful luminous shade of green and the evening sun was turning the sea to gold. It was beautiful enough to break your heart and, as she scrubbed, we carried on a pleasurably mournful conversation on the subject of lost love. She told me about the night when she had waited outside a cinema for her date with a G.I. whom she had "really loved". -- "I waited and waited, but he never come. Then I saw his friend walking towards me and I knew what he was going to tell me. I just said to myself "Well, that's war, I guess"." Poor child. She was so obviously deprived and her lovely American, with his money, his wisecracks and his heroism as a member of a bomber crew, must have seemed like a knight in shining armour to her. I wonder what happened to her. I hope she settled down in the WAAF, where she would have experienced discipline, comradeship and, in truth, care and concern for her welfare. I hope she got happy. It was just the war, I guess.
Meanwhile I had plenty of time to get to know Derrick better. In some ways he was a serious young man - serious about his work, serious about the war, of course, and serious about himself and his ambitions, but at the same time he had a mischievous schoolboyish sense of fun and a dry, somewhat irreverent wit, which meant that there was always a lot of laughter in our lives.
For us life in Sidmouth was like a long holiday. We both hired service bikes and cycled everywhere, up hill and down dale. Every Sunday afternoon we caught the bus to the Halfway House on the Exeter road and then we walked down the lane leading to Woodbury Common. In spring the lane was edged with primroses and Devon violets in a profusion seldom seen today. These gave way in summer to tiny scarlet wild strawberries, wonderfully sweet to eat, while up on the Common the bracken fronds uncurled over a carpet of purple heather. I think we liked the Common best in autumn and winter when the clumps of age old pine trees stood out black against an opal sky and when a walk in the cold made the destination for which we always headed all the more inviting.
This mecca of ours was the Tea Bungalow hidden away along a lane just before the Common started. In winter the tea rooms were lit by oil lamps and heated by oil stoves, the very smell of which produced a warm and cosy atmosphere. Curtains and table cloths were of black and white checked cotton and the cups and saucers were in the bright orange shades popular in the 1930s and favoured by such potters as Clarice Cliff. I don't know how the proprietress managed to produce the tea during war time rationing - scones, scotch pancakes and sponge cake as good as my mother's. The Tea Bungalow was very popular, but mostly with local people. It had not been discovered by Service personnel and Derrick and I kept very quiet about the little haven which we regarded as our own.
I hope you will not get the impression that I spent the entire war eating cakes and frolicking around in the country side. Tony, writing from India, took me to task over the frivolous tone of my letters. "I don't want to hear about beautiful sunsets and going to pubs", he wrote, "I want to know what you think". THINK? I didn't think. There was a war on, wasn't there? I could sympathise with Tony, however, and I tried to make my letters a bit more weighty in future.
If I were asked to describe the countryside of Britain at the height of the war I would use one word - peaceful. It was so quiet, so timeless, so utterly peaceful. Yet the war was all pervasive. It filled the air we breathed with yearning and sadness and loss. Like an insidious gas it affected everyone even the most carefree at times. Of course the 大象传媒 News brought the war into people's homes. It was quite a ritual to turn on the radio at 9 o'clock to hear the chimes of Big Ben which preceded the news bulletin. It was definitely not just sentimentality that made us attach importance to hearing those deep, strong chimes. They kept the nation together, giving us a sense of normality and security.
The popular songs of the day were different. Now they were sentimental, yet they, too, brought us comfort.
"When you hear Big Ben you're home again
Home dear where you belong".
or "It's a lovely day tomorrow,
Tomorrow is a lovely day".
and most popular of all -
鈥淭here'll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, when the world is free鈥�.
We listened to Vera Lynn singing on the radio and we danced to the tunes in dimly lit NAAFI canteens and village halls, someone thumping away on the piano and the air solid with cigarette smoke and the smell of beer.
One of the joys of life in Sidmouth was the Medics Concert Party. There was quite a wealth of talent among the staff of the Depot and a good programme could be made up of singers, musicians and comedians. Then there was Tina, the dancer and she had been a dance teacher before the war and she was determined to train a little troupe of dancers to add glamour (!) and sex appeal (!) to the show. I was press-ganged into becoming one of a quartet known as 鈥楾he Dancettes鈥�. I don't think any of us knew a thing about stage dancing, but under Tina's direction we jolly well had to learn. We had great fun and did quite well as long as the routines were simple, but Tina got too ambitious on one occasion. She dressed us up in ballet dresses (made mostly from strips of medical gauze) and turned us into little swans for a scene from Swan Lake. We twirled around the stage valiantly until Tina, playing the Prince, came leaping into our midst, causing general confusion. Somebody's shoe flew off in the melee and narrowly missed the head of the C.O., sitting in the front row. As far as I can remember Swan Lake was a one off performance.
Derrick was a member of the Medics, too, as he played the drums, sometimes in a small orchestra and sometimes in a trio which accompanied the singers and dancers. And there was another act on the programme. A quite elderly airman by the name of Arthur was posted to the Depot and he proved himself to be a paper-tearer of some skill. He needed someone to help him in his act and, my latent Thespian ambitions getting the better of me, I agreed to become the Paper-Tearer's Assistant. Arthur really was a dab hand at manipulating a sheet of newspaper and my job was to hand him the paper with a flourish and then to hold up the result of his manipulations with a suitable expression of amazement and delight; a nice little act if it hadn't been for the jokes. We couldn't do the act in silence, but Arthur's patter was corny in the extreme. Sometimes I would demur about the use of a certain joke and this would upset Arthur. "It's not dirty", he would assure me, "Nothing suggestive about it". Occasionally he would agree to leave out a joke which I had vetoed, but then when he got me up there on the stage he would craftily slip in the offending joke and I would have no alternative but to say my lines through gritted teeth. If only we had had a good script writer! I grumbled about the jokes, but I couldn鈥檛 think of any better ones.
The Medics put on regular shows in Sidmouth at the Manor Hall, later to be renamed the Manor Pavilion and transformed into a proper theatre, but then primarily a dance hall with a stage at one end. We also piled into big old service lorries and rumbled along the dark country lanes, taking the show to all the nearby villages, where it was well received, particularly by the children. I remember the village hall at Branscombe where a crowd of wide-eyed children gathered round the stage holding out their hands to receive the 2ft high paper ladders and rows of dancing paper dolls that Arthur was producing for them. That was a triumphant night for Arthur, when even the jokes seemed to be OK.
I spent eighteen months in Sidmouth during which time Derrick and I got to know a number of local residents, some of whom were to become much valued lifelong friends. Most of these people were connected with the Sidmouth Musical Comedy Society and Derrick was asked to play the drums in the orchestra for the Company's productions. They didn't want to leave me out, so I was given various jobs. Sometimes I did the make-up, applying thick grease paint that adhered to the face like a mud pack. On other occasions I was in charge of the spot light, which I operated in a God-like "Let there be light" sort of way, directing a sudden blinding beam of light on to the solo singers and dancers. It was all very different from the sophisticated lighting and sound systems in use today, but it was a lot of fun.
When Derrick and I had volunteered to serve in the RAF we had had no idea where we would be sent or what we would have to do and, although we appreciated the good fortune that had brought us to Sidmouth, we inevitably felt guilty that we were enjoying such a pleasant life in the midst of war. This was forcibly brought home to me when I heard the sad news of the death of my cousin, Robert, who had been serving as a pilot with the RAF in Italy.
Derrick, too, had had a cousin, Dennis Appleby, about whom he often talked. Dennis had joined the navy and was a crew member of HMS Curacao when that ship was escorting the Queen Mary,. By some dreadful accident the two ships collided in mid ocean and Dennis was one of the many men who tragically lost their lives.
Our two cousins, Derrick's and mine, died so young, robbed not only of their youth, but of the future's long forgiving years.
We were in Sidmouth at the time of the D Day landings, when the Allied troops returned to France exactly four years after the retreat from Dunkirk. On our Sunday afternoon walks in the country we had seen many preparations for the offensive. Rounding a corner in a country lane we might meet a huge brown American tank, driven by an unsmiling G.I. making for an embarkation point. (It was sobering to think that many of those easy-going, generous, kindly Americans we had welcomed to our shores in 1942 were about to face the greatest test of their lives). Equipment was stock piled under camouflage netting in secret, hidden places deep in the countryside and from the airfield at Exeter great, heavy transport planes rose unsteadily into the sky, then seemed to steady themselves and fly off strongly on their dangerous journeys. I felt totally isolated from the war. In London during the Blitz and again in Plymouth I had felt that I was part of what was going on, but now as I stood on Salcombe Hill and looked across the calm sea I could only imagine the fear, the courage and the resolution of those engaged in battle on other beaches not so many miles away.
Christmas l944 came and went. We had a jolly Christmas dinner at Knowle, which was then the Depot's headquarters, and on Boxing Day the Medics travelled to Gittisham to put on a show for the patients of a convalescent home there. Derrick gave me a very pretty pale blue silk night-dress case and I gave him a wooden framed perpetual calendar. This was to go with us to wherever we lived and it stands today on a shelf in my sitting room.
In January 1945 the Medical Training Depot left Sidmouth. It was time for all the lovely hotels which had housed us so well to be de-requisitioned; time for their owners to start on the mammoth task of getting them ready for the holiday visitors who would surely be returning before too long. No-one said anything, but we dared to hope that the end of the war was in sight.
Chapter 6 WAAF - Halton. 1945

The Depot moved en bloc to RAF Halton, near Wendover in Buckinghamshire. We arrived at Wendover station when the freezing afternoon had already given way to a deeply black evening. Unperturbed the Depot Band (Derrick amongst them) fell in smartly, we lined up in threes behind them and then, lit by a few dim hurricane lamps, we marched through the darkness to the rousing strains of "Colonel Bogey" and "The Thin Red Line". It seems so funny now, but how else could several hundred bodies be moved from A to B?
Halton had a well established, pleasant air about it. There was a very big RAF hospital, with a number of subsidiary departments, including one for the study and treatment of tropical diseases. There was also the RAF Apprentices School.
By this time recruitment of Medical trainees was diminishing, but Derrick and his colleagues were still quite busy. As a sergeant, Derrick ate in a very fine Sergeants' Mess, but he was dismayed to find that he was back to sleeping in a Nissan hut, which was hard to take after the comfort of Sidmouth. The WAAFs were accommodated in Barrack blocks, three floors high. These were a big improvement on huts as they were light and airy and warmed by central heating pipes. I was in charge of several blocks and had my little office on the first floor of one of them.
Soon after we arrived at Halton there came a contingent of Jamaicans, probably in answer to some recruiting drive in the Caribbean. At meal times they sat at their own tables, which was not conducive to our getting to know them. The reason for their being seated apart was that all along their tables were bowls of sugar and golden syrup in quantities we hadn't seen for years. It was explained that they ate so much sugar at home that their health would suffer if they were deprived of it here. I'm afraid human nature doesn't change. After the war when many Jamaicans came to England to work, again in response to recruitment from the Government, people asked "What are they doing over here taking our houses and our jobs?" At Halton in 1945 the cry was "What are they doing over here eating our sugar ration?"
The Jamaicans could feel resentful, too, as I found out. For some reason, I can't remember what, I wanted a lot of iron bedsteads moved from the top floor of one barrack block to the top floor of the next block and for this job I had to collect a working party of airmen whose trade was G.D. (General Duties or, in other words, dogs-bodies). I reported to the Sergeant at the Guard Room and was allocated six Jamaicans. They were not G.D.s, but were waiting to be tested and given a suitable trade. I took them up to the top floor and showed them what to do and then went down to my office. After a while the sound of silence became deafening and I went to investigate. They were all sitting on the bedsteads in poses of dejection, elbows on their knees, heads drooping miserably. I asked nervously if anything was wrong. "Yes Corporal", one of their number spoke up in educated tones. "We don't think it is right that we are asked to do this menial work just because we are Jamaicans". I assured them that everyone in the Air Force had to do menial tasks at some time and I offered to help them if that would make them feel better. "Oh no, Corporal", the spokesman said, "it is not work for a woman". "All right", I conceded, "if I get an Englishman to do the job with you will that make you feel happier?" Reluctantly they agreed. I was soon back with a rough looking blond lad. "Here you are", I said, "this man doesn't mind doing the work and he's English". The boy spoke for the first time. "Wait a minute", he said, 鈥淒on't go confusing me with the bloody English. I'm Irish". Whoops! "Just do it", I ordered grimly. I sat in the office with the door open so that I could check their progress as they crashed and thumped the beds down the stairs. I heard the Jamaican's precise voice saying "I'm afraid I have little respect for the English". "Oh I hate the bloody English" the Irishman answered cheerfully. I wasn't going to listen to any more of this racist stuff. I shut the door. I could still hear the alarming bumps and bangs on the stone stairs and the low rumble of their mutinous complaints
Halton was within easy reach of London and so I was able to visit my sister in law, Kay, who was then living in our house in Lee with her daughters, Jennifer and Imogen. It was exciting for me to see my old home after four years and to meet the little nieces whom I didn't know. Kay gave me her usual smiling, loving welcome and she was as cheerful and unflappable as ever. She was typical of so many young women in those days, having to bring up their families alone in cold under-heated houses. They had to cope with food rationing and to manage to eke out the clothing coupons in order to dress their children adequately. 鈥楳ake do and mend鈥� was the slogan of the day. Most young mothers could manage the "mend" bit as clothes were darned, patched and sewn up until the material became too thin to take another stitch. And if they were not too good at 鈥榤aking do鈥� then most families were lucky enough to have a Grandmother who had been brought up in the days when all little girls had to learn to sew and who could grab a pair of old cotton curtains and turn them into a pretty little smocked dress with knickers to match in no time at all. With sweets being rationed and new toys a rarity children must have led a rather austere life, but it was the only life they knew and they were happy. I had a lovely time with Kay and the children and I thought it would be wonderful to have two little girls like my nieces. (And that was just what I got!).
An added joy came when I heard that Gracie the much loved friend of my childhood was home for the week-end, so I went along to the dear familiar house next-door-but-one and called on her too. Gracie admired my uniform and was envious of my "exciting" life in the WAAF. However, looks were deceptive. Gracie had spent three years at college in safe, pretty Torquay and now she taught domestic subjects at a village school in Suffolk. It seemed as if she had had a peaceful life, but Torquay had been the home of an Air crew training unit and over the three years Gracie had met many young pilots to be. There were quite a number of whom she had become very fond and to whom she had written after they left Torquay and every one of those boys had been killed within a few months. So it was Gracie who had had to grow an extra protective skin and had learned to live for the day. I was the soft one, still living a sheltered life, even after having spent four years in uniform. Despite our different experiences, we soon reverted to being the girls we were before the war had separated us and the house reverberated to our squeals and our laughter.
l945 proceeded uneventfully at Halton. Off duty we explored the charms of Buckinghamshire, Aylesbury, Amersham, High Wycombe and the Chalfonts, all delightful and still displaying some of their pre-war middle class prosperity. The only menacing signs of war in the skies over southern Britain were the flying bombs or doodle bugs. Some of these were shot down over the coast, but those that got through brought indiscriminate destruction, injury and death to the streets once more. I saw only one or two of them during visits to London and I found them horribly sinister as they travelled relentlessly through the sky towards an unknown target. Then came the even more deadly V2 rockets, and again it was impossible to judge where they would strike. This must have been extremely nerve wracking for the war weary inhabitants of London, which of course was what the enemy intended. It was a last vain attempt to break the British spirit. However people were not deterred from going to London and Derrick and I still went there for a visit to the theatre or to see Derrick's parents in East Sheen.
The days passed slowly. Derrick lectured and I administered and another Spring came round. The war was in its sixth year and still men were fighting and people were dying. Many soldiers who thought that they had become inured to scenes of horror were to suffer perhaps their worst experience when, in their advance through Germany they came upon the infamous Nazi concentration camps, certain proof if they needed it that they had indeed been waging war on evil
By the beginning of May all the news we heard pointed to the fact that the end of the war in Europe was imminent and on the 6th May the German General Staff prepared to surrender.
The 8th May 1945 was V.E. Day. Only a skeleton staff remained on duty and the rest of us were free to travel to the Capital to celebrate with the Royal family and Winston Churchill, people who had been such an inspiration to us during the hard times. So Derrick and I really were crowd players in the great Pageant of History as we joined the vast cheering throng outside Buckingham Palace. You will be sure to see photos from time to time of that great mass of smiling faces. Whenever I see such a photo I look in vain for Derrick and me in their midst. Not that we stayed there long. Knocking off policemen's helmets, climbing lamp-posts and doing the conga with a lot of strangers was not really our scene. "What a crush", we exclaimed in spoilsportish tones and we made our way down Constitution Hill away from the crowds, where we could rejoice and give thanks together. To me the most wonderful thing was that the lights were being switched on again to shine out proudly in London and all over the country after our long years in the dark. London held so many happy memories for both Derrick and me and the great city had come through the war battered but undefeated.
We had so much to give thanks for on V.E. Day, but the war was not over. Fighting in the Far East against Japan was still continuing in all its horror. Our soldiers who fought in Burma and Malaya were always to bitterly refer to themselves as the 鈥楩orgotten Army鈥�. Certainly it was hard for us at home to conceive of the unbearable conditions under which they lived and fought, but they were not forgotten. Everyone hoped and prayed for an end to the fighting, but it was impossible to see how and when this could be achieved.
On the 6th August bombers of the United States Air Force flew over Japan and released an atom bomb over the city of Hiroshoma, causing death and destruction on a scale previously unknown. A second atom bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki on the 9th August and on the l4th August Japan surrendered unconditionally.

Chapter 7 WAAF - Cardington. l945-46.

In September l945 I received one last posting - to Cardington in Bedfordshire This move was long overdue, for when I had gone to the Recruiting Office in 1941 I had been promised quick promotion if I opted for the Administrative Branch. I had been made a Corporal within 6 months, which certainly was quick, but in 1945 I was still a Corporal. It often happened that one was posted to another Station upon receiving promotion and a year or so earlier a posting with promotion to Sergeant had come through for me. Derrick and I hadn't liked this at all and Derrick had hastened to our Commanding Officer and begged him to stop the posting by saying that I couldn't be spared from my duties at the Medical Training Depot. The C.O. was unable to refuse such a heartfelt plea and did as we asked. This happened on a couple more times and on each occasion he blocked the posting. We were lucky to have such a kind and understanding C.O. We always appreciated what he had done for us and spoke of him with affection over the years. But when the posting to Cardington came through he told me, "I'm sorry I couldn't stop it this time, but never mind, you will soon be demobbed". So there was nothing for it but to tearfully pack my kitbag and depart.
Cardington was the training centre for all Barrage Balloon operators, but training had all but ceased by this time. The great grey balloons flopped sadly overhead like party balloons drooping and abandoned after the party was over. The wind slapped and buffeted them and whistled through their ropes.
There had always been a connection with balloons at Cardington. In the l920s and '30s it had been the Royal Airship Works and in the gigantic hangers the huge airships, R100 and R101 were designed and built. I remembered the excitement Gracie and I had felt when, sitting on the open-topped No. 75 bus on our way home from school, we had seen the famous Rl0l making its majestic way across the sky. Soon after that, while taking a party of distinguished people on a demonstration flight, the great airship, of which everyone was so proud, burst into flames, killing everyone on board. We had all spoken in hushed tones of the Rl0l. Its loss seemed to have been a great national tragedy. Was this the reason why Cardington seemed to me to be a sad place? I wondered if its desolate air was caused by the wind moaning round the no longer wanted barrage balloons or by the disappointed ghosts of the men who had worked so hard to build the ill-fated R101.
Cardington would always be an ugly, cheerless place with its rows upon rows of Nissan huts intersected by concrete paths and long concrete roads, but a big joy to me was the little N.C.O.'s room that I had to myself at the end of one of the huts. There was just space enough for a bed and a locker and an old ammunition box, which went under the bed and in which I could keep my personal belongings. In the corner about three feet from the bed was a small iron fireplace. Each evening I lit my fire, which glowed red hot and filled the little room with a most luxurious warmth. I was very reluctant to go out in the evenings. I wanted to stay in and stoke up my fire. If the temperature dropped below 80 degrees I began to feel chilly!
I was at Cardington for about eight months, but the time went quite quickly. I was able to meet Derrick every week-end and on one occasion we both applied for 48 hour passes so that we could travel to Sidmouth to buy an engagement ring. Where else could we buy it?
It was nothing but vanity, but I was glad to display a Sergeant鈥檚 stripe on my sleeve before I left the WAAF. I really did do a Sergeant's job at Cardington, being in charge of the Admin office with just one clerk to assist me and being responsible to my officer for the whereabouts and well-being of all WAAF personnel.
The war was over and many trained Air Crew were redeployed to Admin and office work, jobs which they did with relaxed good humour. One of these men was a Sergeant Air Gunner called Junior. He had a chip on his shoulder because, although fully trained, he had never flown on ops. He had a chip on the other shoulder because I wouldn't take his protestations of love seriously. "Junior is very fond of you", his friend told me, "He says he does love you, but he wishes you weren't a Sergeant". "Oh, why's that?", I wondered. "Don't you know?" The friend sounded shocked. "Don't you know that no man wants a woman to be his equal. No man loves a clever woman". Poor old Junior. Didn't he know that the world was changing? Womens鈥� Lib. was a long way off in 1945, but many women had done men鈥檚 work during the war and they were beginning to think a little differently about their role in life.
There was another nice old Sergeant at Cardington, probably no older than 40, but with an extremely lived in face; a face that reminded one of empty beer bottles, overflowing ash trays and countless excuses for coming home late. "Aren't you frightened of going back to Civvy Street?", he asked. I said I wasn't. "Surely you are a bit frightened", he almost pleaded. I began to understand when he told me later, "She's sent back my clothes". Evidently "she" didn't mind having fun with him when he was on leave, but didn't want to be bothered with him permanently. I realised that someone of his age, with no roots, would feel very reluctant to leave the security of service life. It was equally hard for many married men who had been away from home for the best part of six years and were preparing to return to a wife and children who had become strangers. As for me, I couldn't wait.
It was May, 1946 when I made the journey to the WAAF Demob Centre somewhere in the Midlands. After I had said my final good-bye to the WAAF I was met at the gate of the Centre by my good friend, ex-WAAF Mary, now the mother of two small sons. She seemed as excited as I was as her little car bounded along the empty roads in the glorious May sunshine. Hope was everywhere in those post-war days. It sprang out of the earth amidst the bluebells at the roadside, it bounced off the swaying branches of the trees. I spent the night at Mary's home and as I stood in her garden and breathed the fresh country air I really took in the fact that a new life was beginning for me; a life that many people wanted in 1946 - a house of one's own and babies and someone coming home in time for tea and mowing the lawn in the cool of the evening - just like it had been before the war.
But it was other people who had won the war. Other people had fought and endured and been wounded in body and heart and mind. Other people had died. No-one who lived through the war years can ever forget those people or cease to be grateful for the precious life which is ours.

All the people in this account were real people and I have tried to write about then as I remembered them, but though my memories seem clear names often elude me so some characters have been given fictitious names.

Heather Simpson.
Sidmouth 2002

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.