大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV on behalf of Charlotte Moore and has been added to the site with her permission. Charlotte Moore fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

VE day:

I lived at Lasham Aerodrome in a Nissan hut with 20 other WAAFs. We worked as instruments repairers for the flight deck. In fact we actually renewed the instruments rather than repaired them as they were too complex. We had trained at Melksham, Wiltshire.

(I had had no prior experience. I signed up originally as a barrage balloon operator in Glasgow. We lost so many balloons due to high gales and the Royal Artillery complained about them getting in the way of their guns! We were asked if we would remuster so I went to be trained as an instrument repairer.)

All of us in the Nissan hut were woken up at about 2 o'clock in the morning and told that peace was declared. That was the 8 th May 1945. We went to the salvage dump that was full of old aircraft tyres and set it alight, that was our beacon.

Then, it came over the tannoy that the Air Force were going to take us up to London by lorry to celebrate VE day. But we had no money so they offered us 拢1 each to spend there! But we had to pay them back later! I was paid fortnightly 拢2 2shillings- wages in the Air Force weren't very high.

Practically the whole station went up to London - loads of Lorries. We booked a B&B behind Quaker House (Euston Road) which cost us 2 and 6. (12.5 pence.) That left us 17 & 6 for meals which was to last until the next day to go back to Lasham. So there was no heavy drinking, we couldn't afford it!

We went to Buckingham Palace to see the King and Queen so I was there in all those photos that you can see today. So many people were there, it was marvellous. The atmosphere was fantastic, people dancing, people swinging on lamposts and singing. That's one memory I won't forget.

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