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This is Stella Barton’s story: it has been added by Pauline Colcutt (on behalf of the Fernhurst Centre), with permission from the author who understands the terms and conditions of adding her story to the website.

I was trained in London for two weeks at the end of 1939. I was then sent to fighter command headquarters at Bentley Priory, Stanmore where I was assigned to the plotting table — plotting the enemy aircraft coming in. We worked four hour shifts (four on and four off) which changed each week making it quite disruptive for sleep and day to day things. We lived in a converted village hall which had been divided into little bedrooms. For me this was a new experience as I had never been to boarding school. However, I enjoyed it and made two very good friends. I was on the plotting table throughout the Battle of Britain and I must have been fairly efficient as I was on the South Coast section which was the busiest area. We had to be very quick at placing the arrows down locating the enemy aircraft as they came over. This information was constantly updated from our radar stations, and this helped enormously in enabling our fighter aircraft locate the German bombers.. I was there until the end of 1940 and then I got a commission and went to train as a code decipher officer. This consisted of a typewriter and four drums — the drums behind the screen with every letter of the alphabet on each drum the code proved impossible to break (the Germans never did break it). I was mostly at Upwood (Huntingdonshire) which was mainly a training station for Blenheim aircraft. I met my first husband here and we married in September 1941 after six months I was allowed out of the WAAF because I was pregnant with my son. My husband was a very fine pilot and awarded the DSC - sadly he was killed in October 1944 over Holland.

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