- Contributed by听
- Norfolk Adult Education Service
- People in story:听
- Gertrude (Bobby) Jolley
- Background to story:听
- Royal Air Force
- Article ID:听
- A3129950
- Contributed on:听
- 14 October 2004
This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Gertrude (Bobby) Jolley and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.
I was 18 when I joined the WAAF in 1941. I met my husband in a pub in Lowestoft while I was in the Services. He was in the Navy. Jack was in Lowestoft because his ship was being repaired after being torpedoed. The pub was 鈥淭he Waveney鈥, and I was in there with some of my friends. After that, Jack went abroad for another year and a half, but we kept in touch, and met up again when he came back.
My new mother-in-law lived in Wimbledon. On one occasion I was on the Underground with a friend on my way to see her, but when we got to our destination station there was an air raid on and we weren鈥檛 allowed to leave the station. The place was full of people unrolling bedding and settling down for the night in whatever corner they could find. We had to sleep there too. Next morning there was no time to continue our journey as I had to be back at base that day. So I got the train straight back, having spent my precious leave on the Underground!
On the whole we all had a jolly good time in the WAAF. I was posted where the pilots were trained, and later went on to work on the planes鈥 log books checking that necessary repairs were done. We never had any trouble with being bombed, although we did all have to take turns at being on fire picket.
We had all just left school and were away from home for the first time. We used to go in the NAAFI for dances, and I played kettle drum and bugle in the WAAF band. We did lots of parades to raise money for 鈥淲ar Weapon Week鈥, and I liked this part better than the rest of my work.
For a while I worked on barrage balloons, repairing them and packing them up ready to go out to the sites. The barrage balloons had a diaphragm where the air went in, and we used to climb in there and have a game of cards away from the watchful eyes of the Sergeants! So you can see that I really enjoyed my war time experiences and it was not a tragic time for me at all.
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