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While we were stationed at RAF Ballykelly the people who lived in the area were very good to us, they treated us as part of the community. I mentioned about Ma Hassan who ran an open house where any of the service personnel were made welcome. One of the girls from the camp, Sally Kent eventually married her son who worked in the bank. Ma Hassan baked scones and made tea and you only had to put your sixpence into a saucer which sat out on a wee table. The boys loved Ma Hassan and she loved them. It was just like a home from home to all the boys and girls at Ballykelly, she had a back yard where we all sat out and drunk the tea and just talked. The boys would have done the washing up of the cups, like they would have done at home. We used to go out of the camp sometimes to Limavady which at that time was just a little village, it took no time to walk through it. Sometimes when we had gone out for an evening and were late in coming back to the camp, there were many ways you could sneak back in without being caught. There were too many small roads around the camp to close off. Many a night when we were trying to sneak back in, the old boilerman, who kept the boiler fired to have warm water for the abolitions, would see us and say in a loud voice, “You are late tonight girls.” We would try to get him to keep quiet to avoid the SPs catching us. The abolitions and the boiler house were near to our Nissen billet. We had a coal fire inside the billet, it sat in the middle of the floor but we were rationed to a certain amount of coal for the fire. Many a time we were very cold. I remember one time the snow and ice was so bad, that the snow was being blown in through the corner of the Nissen hut where we were sleeping. My bed was just three beds from the corner where the snow was blowing in and I remember one night when it was so bad, I got my Great Coat and put it over a brush and stuffed it into the corner to keep the snow from blowing in. Otherwise the hut wasn’t too bad, it was just that corner which let the snow blow in. The weather could be quite bad up there at times, I remember a Canadian aircrew being all killed when returning to RAF Ballykelly through a thick blanket of fog. I remember we had to go out on parade one morning before breakfast and it was freezing cold and the mist was coming down . My friend Ellie McStay was also on parade, she said the WAAF beside her was so cold that she didn’t know whether the water which was blowing towards her was rain or coming from the nose of the cold WAAF.

After the war was ended we took part in a Victory Parade in Londonderry at which the salute was taken by Field Marshal General Montgomery. This was held in 1945 and several contingents of WAAFs too part. There were photographers there to record the event. We were towards the rear of the parade.

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