How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On (29 page)

I was in the ATS, stationed at Aldershot. It would be the summer of 1943 or 1944. One dinner time, the orderly officer doing the rounds asked the usual: ‘Any
complaints?’

Normally, no one dared speak up. But this time, one girl said: ‘Yes ma’am, there are dead flies in the chips.’

The officer went into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told us, ‘the flies are falling from the ceiling into the hot fat. Just put them to
one side and eat the chips.’

Another danger at mealtimes was to do with the prunes and custard. Recruits passed the warning on to all newcomers: ‘If you get a prune with legs on it – it’ll be a
cockroach!’

Barbara Leach, Skipton, North Yorkshire

I was a WAAF during the war and stationed on a balloon site near Portsmouth. We had a bucket toilet but we had to get two grappling hooks and carry the toilet to a great big
well on the site, take the lid off, and empty the toilet into this well. One time we forgot to put the iron lid back on the well. We went to bed in the Nissen hut, leaving two guards on duty. One
girl came home quite late, crept away from the guards, then fell into the well. Her screams were awful and woke us all up. If you could have seen the mess of her and the stench. Poor soul! We got
seven days’ pay stopped for not putting the lid back on and she had seven days’ jankers [restriction of privileges] for coming in late!

Our balloon blew away one night when we should have been on guard. You see, every time the wind changed, and the balloon is bedded on the ground, you had to turn the balloon into the wind. We
were both having cocoa at the time. When we came out, the balloon had gone. We were panic-stricken. We woke the sergeant and she said: ‘You’ll have to get a new one up right
away!’

So all twelve of us were up working all night long to put up another balloon as an air raid had started. We had a severe reprimand and fourteen days’ pay stopped. Didn’t we suffer?
But we enjoyed it all really!

Mrs J. Evans, Loughton, Essex

We were in a large ATS barrack room sleeping in double-tier bunks. One morning I put out my hand for my shoes, only to find water, quite a few inches of it too. If that was a
shock, imagine how I felt when I saw two ducks placidly swimming towards me. There had been heavy rain and wind during the night, the outside door had blown open, and in came the deluge – and
the ducks.

Joyce McDiarmid, Kirkintilloch

At the end of 1939, I joined the WAAFs as a sparking plug tester, but it was decided that WAAFs would take over from men to man barrage balloon sites, which was a very tough and
strenuous job and the only branch of the WAAFs where you received equal pay to the men, and the only branch which you could not re-muster into another job.

The balloons had to be unshackled and as the cable was paid out from the winch, the guy ropes had to be held until the balloon was at the point of detachment and the tail guy rope was held to
the last, before the balloon was sent up. Well, the girl who was at the engine paying out the cable, must have put her foot on the accelerator because the next thing I knew, I was a few feet from
the ground. I was petrified when I looked down. I didn’t know whether to hang on or jump! All the girls on the site were shouting out to the girl on the winch to stop the engine and I think
she had as much of a fright as me when she saw me up there. I decided that the only thing I could do was to let go of the rope and I landed, twisting one of my feet quite badly. I had to have it
strapped up for quite a time and I still have problems with that foot to this day. It wasn’t that funny at the time, but when I think how funny I must have looked – a good buxom wench
like me, dangling up in the air on the end of that rope – I certainly have a laugh about it now.

Mrs K. P. Ross, Northolt, Middlesex

The scene is a small ward adjoining a general ward of a military hospital. A patient is brought in with a bad cough. He is under guard and is put to bed in a small one-bed ward
adjoining the long general ward. The guard makes himself as comfy as possible with a hard chair and a newspaper. Night comes, and with it the change of staff. The night sister is kind and jolly,
but also very busy. The orderly is new, but eager to please.

During the small hours coughing is heard from the small room. It persists and at last sister pours out some cough mixture and calls the orderly saying: ‘Here, give this to the poor
fellow.’

There is silence for a short time, then the coughing starts again. Again, sister calls the orderly and, pouring out a sleeping draught says: ‘Give this to the poor man – he must have
some rest. I’ll be along in a minute.’

When she enters the small room a few moments later, she has a shock. The guard is about to drink the sedative. The patient is sleeping peacefully.

G. A. Jennings, former VAD attached to the RAMC

The following took place just after lunch on a warm summer’s afternoon during 1943 and was reminiscent of a Brian Rix Whitehall farce. For the duration of the war I was
employed in the Admiralty within a very important office unit comprising naval officers but also staffed with civilian clerks and typists.

The officer in the incident was a young lieutenant, a bachelor, whose home was in the West Country and who lived in London in a service club. Lacking the services of mum, or other female family
member to rally round with the occasional sewing job, he relied upon his secretary to help him out now and then for any minor, but necessary, tailoring tasks.

On this particular afternoon he had the misfortune to acquire a lengthy split along the seam of his trousers in the nether region. He arranged with his secretary to pass the trousers out to her
for mending at her desk in the other office. He solved the problem of what to wear in the meantime by draping around his waist a tartan travelling rug that he kept in the office and used for
sleeping when duty officer.

The first part of the operation went well, and he returned to his desk where his strange apparel was hidden when he sat down. Unfortunately, the sewing job was delayed by several lengthy
telephone calls that his secretary had to deal with. Before she had time to complete the repair, the young lieutenant had a visitor, a high-ranking naval officer from one of the Southern Commands,
with many impressive rings of gold braid adorning his sleeves.

The messenger who had conducted the visitor from the main entrance ushered him into the office of the lieutenant, who immediately rose to his feet to greet his superior officer with suitable
deference to his rank, completely forgetting his unorthodox garb.

The visitor’s bemused look took in the spectacle of the lieutenant standing there in his naval uniform, but clad from the waist downwards in a red tartan sarong, finishing just below his
knees and displaying his socks and suspenders.

Just then his secretary, flustered by the delay, rushed in with the trousers, nearly knocking the visitor over and exclaiming: ‘We should have done this after the office closed!’

On seeing the visitor, her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. Then she dropped the trousers on the floor, and fled before anyone could say anything. Lieutenant X retired, red-faced, to
complete his attire while the visitor was pacified with a cup of tea, over which everything was explained.

Mrs D. Faithfull, Pinner, Middlesex

At the beginning of the war, my London office was evacuated to a newly built block of flats in Surrey. All our young boys either volunteered or were called up in their various
age groups. Many joined the RAF or the Royal Navy. Some served with distinction and always came to see us when on leave. Naturally, we felt a great pride in ‘our’ boys. So when in 1942
the older sample were called up, they also came to see us and had the usual spate of questions to answer.

One of those that returned was Henry, who joined the RAF and came to see us in his aircraftsman’s uniform a few months later. He had been in our office several years and was a reserved,
quietly spoken fellow, not given to much obvious humour. The questioning went like this: