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From Leighton Buzzard I was posted to Fighter Headquarters at RAF Bentley Priory at which was about ten miles from where my parents lived. I thought when I was attached to the RAF I was going to see the world, instead of being posted ten miles from home. This was about 1939. Our uniform consisted of a hat and a tunic and we had black stockings and black shoes and awful underwear, but there were no issue skirts. At the beginning of the war we all wore our own skirts with the other parts of the uniform. We were paid threepence a week for wearing our own skirts, our wages were very meagre as we were paid one shilling and fourpence a day, which was two thirds the men’s rate of pay. I used to wonder how anyone who was married survived on those rates of pay. We had all our clothing, less skirts, provided, civilians had clothing coupons to buy clothing if it was available. We might sometimes get hand downs from a relation, or sometimes someone might give you a coupon if you were very lucky. I got married in 1942 and I couldn’t even buy a wedding dress. I think for something like a skirt you had to have about three or four coupons. We were adequately clothed and I was very grateful to get the threepence a week skirt allowance. We had a café near the camp and used to go there and get a cup of coffee and a biscuit for threepence. The cinema cost sixpence, but it was in Watford and it was four miles walk each way to go to the cinema. If you were fortunate you had a bicycle and people were very much more honest than today you could cycle there and leave your bicycle outside with complete confidence that it would be there when you came out from the cinema. The other way we travelled was by ‘thumb’ and hitched all over the place. I spent two years at Bentley Priory Fighter Headquarters.

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