大象传媒

We had now come to the end of our stay at Innsworth Lane, and as usual we were awakened by the Tannoy at 6am. Someone jumped out of bed and shouted, 鈥淐ome on Girls, we are being posted today, get up!鈥� It was Elsie, the brave and helpful one who had been in domestic service and who had been so kind and good for us in many ways 鈥� for instance, she showed us how to light the fire when the wood was damp and when we couldn鈥檛 get it to light such as rolling the newspaper up into sticks and holding a sheet of newspaper over the grills to give it a draught. I must say I thought she was going to set the place alight on two or three occasions when the sheet of newspaper caught fire. As my mother used a gas poker and coal when she lit a fire, I needed help when it was my turn to light the fire. I was glad of Elsie鈥檚 help.

Another kindness was when some of us were laid low with our injections, she would smuggle us a mug of tea out of the mess, when all we needed was a drink, and felt too ill to get to breakfast. She took a big risk there because food was not allowed to be taken out of the Mess. In so many ways she was a staunch friend in need. We were excused PT, drilling etc during this period and were allowed to take to our beds for a day or so but no malingering. If you were too ill to get to the Mess for food, you were deemed to be too ill to eat any but Elsie helped 鈥� where she could. Some girls were alright, it wasn鈥檛 everyone who was ill.

I wonder if Elsie is still alive and how life had treated her in the last 65 years. She deserved a better life than she had had previously. Her mother died when she was very young and she had a rotten stepmother for a time. Then an old aunt adopted her but made it clear to her that this was only because she was old and infirm and she could have Elsie as a drudge to take care of her. However Auntie died and Elsie finished up in domestic service as a kitchen maid at a young age. It is my opinion that Elsie was happier in the WAAF than she had ever been, at least she had all her clothes supplied, her bed and board and one shilling (5p) a day, seven shillings a week, pocket money.

We packed our kit bags, said goodbye to those going on different course and I finished up at Penarth in South Wales, in a private billet with two lovely people, Mr and Mrs Gray. He was a retired Sea Captain, she a retired Matron of a boys Royal Naval Orphanage. They had married late in life and had no children but felt they should be patriotic and help the war effort by billeting a member of the Forces. They chose to have a WAAF, me, and I grew to love them and they too felt the same about me. It was a beautiful house they lived in, I had a lovely bedroom and when they heard my mother was ill with cancer, they wanted to adopt me, although my mother did live for a few more years. Had I known my father would get married again a year after my mother鈥檚 death, to a woman with four children, I think I would have accepted their offer of adoption. They said I was the type of daughter they would have wished for, blonde, slim, very blue eyes and a pink and white complexion. (Perhaps I should add here that I was fully aware of it! Well no-one鈥檚 perfect)!

Each day as we were all in billets, we had to meet at a certain place and march properly as taught at Innsworth Lane, to a school classroom for our course as clerk/accountants. I was already a shorthand typist/ bookkeeper, as I went to a secretarial college after I left High School in Hastings. My father was in the Police Force so my parents could afford it although I did have a brother and sister who were treated similarly; so we did have to live on a budget.

One of our teachers in Penarth had been a school teacher before enlisting in the RAF and he was great! A good teacher with a good sense of humour and I think we all had a crush on him. Those were happy days.

On the course I had a friend called Joyce Hall and sometimes on a Sunday I would be allowed to invite her to tea, at other times she was allowed to have me to tea where she was billeted. She was billeted with a lady whose family had been 鈥楲ords and Ladies鈥� of the Manor House but due to the war she did not live in the big house, only a small part of it. Instead of a retinue of servants, she had an old retainer who had been her butler and he managed the household domestics etc. Being patriotic, she too took on a WAAF, ie Joyce Hall, a nice, clean, well behaved girl and a nicely spoken one as well!

We did not have much spare time after school because we had a lot of homework to do so I suppose one could say that it was only at weekends that we were free to do much.

I have often found during my lifetime that something I regarded at the time as 鈥榖ad luck鈥� turned out to be 鈥榞ood luck鈥� and this was one of those times. Because I had not been vaccinated as a baby for smallpox, my vaccination made me very ill and when I reached Penarth I fainted and was taken off in an ambulance to a big hospital at RAF St Athen. My arm was a mass of dreadful sores, I had inflammation from wrist to elbow, a large lump under my arm and a very high temperature. I was in the hospital for about two weeks, there were no antibiotics then, and when I was well enough to leave hospital, I was sent home for two weeks sick leave. Therefore I missed the billet I was allocated. Hence I finished up with Mr and Mrs Gray and on the same course as Joyce Hall. Hence my observation that bad luck can often and does turn out to be good luck.

Joyce and I passed the final exams, although some did not, and we were ready to move on again.

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