大象传媒

During the war my role was as a supplier for parachute droppers, dinghies, food, canned water etc.

My boyfriend was in the Air Force, and so I wanted to join the Air Force as well.

I worked with the parachutes, and I used to work on the bombers on the starboard side of the Wellingtons. I had to go around to check the parachutes to make sure they hadn't been tampered with, especially with the locking mechanism. Then I had to hang them and test them for acid. If anything was wrong with them, then they wouldn't have opened properly.

I used to have to pack the dinghies as well and check the capacity and buoyancy. You had to know everything about them to do the job properly.

The only thing that I didn't like was when I was working on the dinghies on the bombers I couldn't always undo the bolts that the men had done!

I passed out as a leading aircrafts woman when the war ended. The training took place in Hereford and we had to march with the band. We learned how to pack a parachute by turning them inside out and having to get them the right way round again. If you passed out you became an AC1, but I didn't go on to become an AC2.

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