大象传媒

Muriel Wise, Reference 1940
I volunteered to join W.A.A.F. After initial training at Cardington, I was sent to a remote old Manor House near Folkestone called Bawdsy Manor, for six weeks training for Radar. We were the first batch to be trained and carried out the work in a Bunker on the nearby beach both night and day. This was the first Rada station of its kind. (This was shown on television in the series of Keeping Historic Buildings.) On one happy occasion Glen Miller came to the Manor and we danced in the ballroom to his band.
My first posting was to a station near Canterbury where I used to meet my boyfriend Dennis, a pilot who was stationed at Maidstone and where my Mom & Dad came down to celebrate my 21st birthday. The Radar Station was at a remote spot a few miles out of Canterbury called Dunkirk. It was a hut with high pylons around it and the living quarters were some distance away. We would work from 4 am till about noon or 10pm till 4am, though cant remember exactly, as there were three shifts somehow.
The incident happened on my shift (thats me & about 4 or 5 others). I was on the cathode ray machine and plotted in hundreds of enemy aircraft heading for us. We all put on Tin Hats and worked on. They dropped their bombs but missed us and hit the living quarters instead. Many casualties in the sleeping huts; boys & girls and cookhouse workers. We carried on.
Later came the Battle of Britain in earnest and my friend Dennis was shot down in the channel and never found. I tried to be of some comfort to his family, as I knew them well.
My second posting to a Rada station was near Swanage to a place called Worth Matravers. A few miles out near a cliff edge was where my future husband was in charge of a machine gun unit. We were both living in hotels in Swanage, which were taken over for the services. He would take me to the Rada hut on the back of his bike and proposed to me above his post at Windspit. We were married at the church in Worth Matraves & in December soon after we were wed he went to Africa & I was sent to a place where you trained to become an officer. It was located on Lake Windermere. From then on no more Rada just administration work and posted up and down England & Scotland, finishing up at Lossiemouth Bomber Command.

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