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The following is an excerpt from a group reminiscence session held at Ashford Library on 12/11/05. It is added to the site with the participants' permission.

I was 13 when the war broke out. We were living in Lincoln and my father became an intelligence officer. At the age of 17 I volunteered for the RAF and was chosen to take a course in Japanese. I was posted to a station called Chicksands, which was a country house just outside Bedford. The RAF station was an outstation of Bletchley Park and was concentrating on picking up Japanese aircraft signals.

I was posted to London in 1944 but I soon realised that I wasn’t going to learn Japanese. I was going to listen to the Japanese aircraft talking to each other and take down what they were saying phonetically. I didn’t enjoy this and, before long I was sent on a Russian course which lasted about 9 months. There were about 400 of us learning a huge variety of languages, ready for the day when an army of occupation would move into Europe — they would be the interpreters. I sat in London learning irregular verbs as the V1s and V2s crashed around us.

I took the interpretership just around VE Day, which I celebrated in Trafalgar Square and Green Park, getting very drunk for the first time in my life! Almost immediately after that, I was posted to Germany as a Russian interpreter, but there were very few Russians to talk to so I learnt German instead. Eventually, I went back to university and studied both languages. So the RAF gave me something very positive.

Memories contributed by an Ashford resident and collected by Ashford Library Local Studies Service.

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