大象传媒

I decided to volunteer for the W.A.A.F. in 1942 aged eighteen, so as to have more say in the kind of job I would be doing, having seen my sister being called up and weeping all the way to the railway station.

My friend Gladys and I decided on this course after having left grammar school and finished up working in the town's transport office doing a very boring job.

At the town recruitment centre I was given tests in english, maths, geometry, trigonometry and algebra, having left school only two years earlier I was able to make a reasonable job of it.

I was told that as a result of my tests I was eligible for the highest paid job in the service which was R.A.D.A.R. and which was on the secret list - very much so- . Everywhere one went there were posters declaring "CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES" and "BE LIKE DAD KEEP MUM".

When I asked what the job entailed I was told it was either watching a radar screen with an arrow circling and reading the location, speed, height etc of the blips which were aircraft, or plotting the routes of all aircraft, hostile or friendly on a large operational table. I chose the latter.

We had a fortnight "square bashing" at Morcombe on the sea front in the most awful weather during which we had vaccinations which laid me low with a very high temperature. A parcel from home, with home-made xmas cake containing a little brandy cheered me up no end.

My first posting was to No.10 Group in Devon. In a remote country house in Pinhoe (near Exeter)we donned earphones and learned how to plot aircraft on the large operational table, discs in black and yellow were hostile and gave details of altitude and how many. When we got the hang of it we transferred to the real operational room, many miles below ground, with a balcony where officers watched progress and decided when to "scramble" our aircraft in defense.

We lived in a nissan hut with a stove in the centre that never went out and ten beds along one side and ten beds along the other side. I was on "A Watch", there were three watches and I hated the night watch as I had difficulty in staying awake.

When the war ended in 1945, we were redundant and so were posted to Gloucester where all the administration of all the services was carried out.

When I was demobbed in 1946 my local council job was still open for me and I spent one year in it before marrying and leaving the North to go and live in the London suburbs.

I remember war being declared on the radio in 1939, a couple of weeks before my fifteenth birthday. When I left school at sixteen I worked in an office. We would volunteer for night fire watching in empty schools where we would tour the school to make sure no fire bombs had been dropped from enemy planes.

When I was seventeen I was sitting in the upstairs seat in a cinema and the bombers came over and the whole cinema shook. I left to go home and when I reached the end of our street there was dense smoke and the air raid wardens wouldn't allow me to pass until I told them my house was number 18, and then they let me through. Three houses in our street had been bombed and neighbours killed. When I got home the house was empty and all the family were down in the air raid shelter below ground in the garden and very pleased to see me.

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