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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Lesley Carrick of the Norfolk Learning Partnership on behalf of Coral Gillespie and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

The story I want to tell is my Mum’s. She was Joan Frost, and was a cook/corporal in the WAAF on an aircrew ‘Feeder’. Mum was called up when she was twenty-one and had a choice of the Army or the Air Force. She chose the latter because she thought the blue uniform suited her! She remembered a poster that said “Join the WAAF and cook for the RAF. She hoped she wouldn’t get to be a cook because she hated cooking. She had to go and do a cooking test and they asked her to cook fairy cakes. Mum curdled the mixture deliberately, but they were so desperate that they took her on. She was based at North Weald and Hunsdell and had to set up the tables and give the lads a good feed before ops. She never got used to seeing the empty places at the tables when some didn’t come back. After the war Mum was so used to cooking for a hundred or so men that she found it really difficult to cook for two!

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