大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was at school in 1939 and living in Devon. We did occasionally get air raid warnings because we were close to Plymouth and Exeter. We were made to line up and go across the field to a deep ditch; that was our air raid shelter.

I remember the trains full of soldiers going through the station. We lived in the middle near Totnes and could hear and almost see when Plymouth was burning.

I had kept in touch with my science teacher from school who had wanted me to become a teacher. She鈥檇 heard of this job in the Meteorological Office which meant an interview in Bristol. I went along and got the job.

My first contact with the Met office was at Stonehouse in Gloucester where part of it had been evacuated. Stonehouse had previously been a boy鈥檚 private boarding school. I was only there for about 9 months before moving to Dunstable. I believe the whole of Stonehouse moved because of security and the positions needed for the masts for the radio operators, because information came in via the radio to Dunstable. The Met office in Dunstable consisted of a collection of huts, all of them under camouflage nets. People knew it was there but you didn鈥檛 talk about it. You were made very conscious of security. When I met my husband, he was allowed to come as far as the camouflage nets if he met me after late duty, but he couldn鈥檛 come in.

We had to go into digs; I lived in Borough Road with a nice family. Before I was involved in work in the actual office I attended a course in London for about 3 months in 1942. I went to London on the train every day to what remained of the Met Office. We were trained in meteorological observations, heights of clouds, how to read thermometers and rain gauges.

The draughtswomen prepared the observations of the weather over England. There weren鈥檛 many reports from the Atlantic. We relied on about 8 weather ships in that area; there were no satellites in those days. The weather reports came in from wireless operators in Europe. There must have been people broadcasting weather reports but we didn鈥檛 know who the reports came from.

It was all in code and my first job was to de-code it. I then went into the surface section where we prepared the big charts of weather across the world, as far as we knew it, and then I went into the upper air section before I went into the forecasting side.

The codes had to be broken 鈥� decoded, they were in sets of numbers, about eight numbers in a group. You didn鈥檛 know where they came from, you accepted what you were given and worked on it. The reports were garbled sometimes. You had, when you were plotting the chart, to read from a list of 8 figure numbers telling you various things, 8 was high cloud, 16 was 61; we worked in centigrade then. We had charts and tables to help. The humidity was another number. Because you were plotting a chart, you knew the pattern, so when you were decoding, if you hit a garbled patch you were able to slide numbers along until you could perhaps place it and decode it.

I moved to plotting 鈥� a short spell on surface plotting and then I went into the upper air section and we plotted the radio sondes. That鈥檚 a balloon with an apparatus hanging from it, that was sent 30,000ft up into the air to take the temperature, windspeed and humidity. Changes in the weather happen in the upper air before they're too obvious on the surface. Both sections worked together. I found the upper air work interesting and was there for a long time.

Plotting was done using two pens, a red one and a black one joined together because you needed to change between the colours. We were using 鈥榙ip pens鈥� that you dipped into inkwells then. The desks were lengthwise down through the middle of the huts and the desk tops were angled.

We were civilians in civilian clothes but on the long range forecasting section there were about 10 WAAFs. There were always some people in uniform around. We worked from 8am - 2pm , 2pm 鈥� 10pm , 10pm 鈥� 8am in the morning and there were at least 10 of us on at a time, plus the forecasters. Including the admin and drawing office, there must have been up to 200 people working there.

A lot of the RAF chaps worked as wireless operators but there were some civilians. The WAAFs left after the war. A friend of mine Jessie, lived locally and was married to a radio operator; I think he was a civilian. Mr H was in charge of administration. He kept the place together and looked after digs. Eventually I had to move from Borough Road because the young boy of the family, with whom I was staying, needed a room of his own as he got older. Mr H gave me a couple of addresses but that was in 1948 or 49 and people were a little tired of having people living in, so I got a room on my own. Mr C owned a furniture shop in Dunstable and I went there for a while.

The Chief Forecaster when I joined was Mr D, an elderly gentleman. He left and then Dr R S took over. Mr B was head of the office; he was in charge of communications, administration, the drawing office side and the daily weather reports, which went out to everyone.

You didn鈥檛 need to know too much, in fact the less you knew, the better. I was a scientific assistant, not a forecaster. We were not encouraged to go into the radio section. There was a hut in the field and I believe there was some kind of experimental radar in there. We mingled mostly in the canteen - you didn鈥檛 walk around. There wasn鈥檛 much spare time to gossip. At Christmas if I was on duty I sang carols.

Once, when I was on night shift I overheard a conversation. I think one of the radio operators was giving a weather report directly to a bomber pilot on an air raid, but you didn鈥檛 ask, and I can鈥檛 be sure, but the noises in the background made me think that at the time.

After the war in February 1949 there was an article in the Dunstable Borough Gazette called 鈥淵oung Wives Weather-Wise on Radio Watch 鈥� four young weather wise wives are helping to reveal the secrets of Britain鈥檚 weather. They are scientific assistants in a special department at the Meteorological Office Station at Dunstable, where attempts are being made to lengthen the period and increase the accuracy of forecasts. They decode and record reports of local conditions in various parts of the world including ships at sea. The young women Mrs Evelyn Darnell, Mrs Jessie Bates, Mrs Eileen Purdon and Mrs Florence Bliss were drafted to the station during the war but have since married and settled down in the district.鈥�

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