Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos (42 page)

In anticipation of the conclusion of the war in Europe, when all resources would be concentrated on defeating the Japanese, increasing numbers of personnel were posted out to India and Ceylon. Six more WAAF PIs arrived in Delhi from Medmenham, among them Pauline Kraay, Lorna Freke and Diana Kingsley.

Early in the year, Barbara Rugg and her ATS colleagues moved from RAF Benson to the ATS Drawing Office at 1 Air (Survey) Liaison Section, Royal Engineers, in Belgium, to continue their photographic plotting work. This was in support of the Army Photographic Interpretation Section (APIS) of 21st Army Group, providing intelligence to Allied troops advancing towards the River Rhine and across Germany.

In March 1945 four Medmenham WAAF PIs, Margot Collett, Stella Ogle, Betty Holmes and Margaret Price, were posted to Coulommiers, a small town 35 miles east of Paris. They spent their first night in Paris:

In a magnificent French hotel, with red and gold furniture and a private bathroom with masses of hot water! In the evening we went to the Grand Opera and heard ‘Boris Godunov’.
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No. 50 Squadron had moved to Coulommiers to provide photographic cover for the Allied advance, but by the end of March, when they were established, there was little work for them or the PIs to do. An aerial survey of France was carried out to assess the degree of damage caused by Allied bombing. The WAAFs were housed in a villa standing high on a hill outside the town:

We four women have been cleaning, rearranging the furniture and having the time of our lives – we have no access to any radio and are completely cut off from war news. The locals are tremendously kind and hospitable. My French, which is the world’s very worst, is getting me along quite well and I seem to make myself understood far better than I did when holidaying in pre-war days …

WAAF PIs Betty Holmes (foreground) and Margot Collett, with members of 50 PR Squadron, on the steps of the château in Coulommiers, France, 1945.

Later, Margaret moved to live with the old lady who had owned the château where their unit was based, and as there was so little work to do, she frequently travelled to Paris to meet Joe Hurley, an American model maker based nearby, whom she had known at Medmenham. Stella also enjoyed visiting Paris:

It was great fun being by myself, because everyone is so friendly – one is continually getting into conversation with friendly natives or lonely Allied servicemen on leave from the front, so in a strange way I feel much more comfortable and at home there, than I do when I am alone in London. Anyone in Allied uniform travels everywhere free, and doesn’t pay for museums etc. The shops, of course, are quite prohibitive! I enjoyed looking, but not buying.

Having celebrated VE Day in Paris, the PIs returned to Medmenham, and several weeks later Millicent Laws joined Margot Collett and Betty Holmes at Coulommiers, although there was still very little work for them. Millicent returned to England after VJ Day in August, in style if not comfort: squashed between the navigator and pilot in a 50 Squadron PR Mosquito aircraft.

On 7 May, General Eisenhower, with representatives from Britain, France and Russia, accepted the unconditional surrender of all German forces on all fronts, to be effective from 00.01 on 9 May. In eleven months the Allies had fought their way from Normandy, through France, Belgium and Holland to Germany and on to Berlin.

The Operational Record Book for RAF Station Medmenham for 8 May 1945 (Tuesday) reads:

News of German Capitulation and celebrated as VE Day. Parade held at 09.00 concluding with a Divine Service and personnel were released (where possible) from duty for the rest of the day. In the afternoon Station Sports were held followed in the evening by an All Ranks Dance and Camp bonfire. A Dance for Officers was held on the night of VE + 1 and for OR on the same evening.

Most of the Sections were operating at peak up to the last few hours of the German surrender since which time personnel have been engaged in bringing Section records up to date.

Personal memories supplement the rather dry official account of VE Day celebrations at Medmenham.

Servicemen and women preparing for the VE Day parade at RAF Medmenham. The WACs are in the foreground of this squad.

‘Panda’ Carter and her ATS colleagues had moved at the beginning of the year from Esher to Medmenham to continue their work with the production of maps. They lived in the sergeants’ mess hut in the woods and ‘Panda’ recalled great celebrations around the bonfire on VE Day. They were very fond of ‘Rusty’, their ATS officer, as she took turns at making the cocoa for them – unlike the WAAF officers, they noticed! They decided that she would go to the fancy dress dance in the officers’ mess as Persephone, the goddess of spring. They washed yards of waxed muslin (used as the backing for maps), dyed it yellow and draped ‘Rusty’ in it before trimming it with flowers.

Pat Donald was in Regent Street in London on VE Day. She had finished working in April two months before her first baby was born. Just before leaving she had offered to take two young Americans, newly arrived at Pinetree, to show them London. They chose to visit the Windmill Theatre, so in a very pregnant state Pat sat through the show of scantily clad dancers and nude tableaux. The Americans thought it was marvellous and didn’t want to see anything else in London.

Barbara Rugg remembered VE Day in Brussels:

We went into Brussels by truck and all the rose sellers came up and gave us roses because we were in the services. We went into the AES club to hear Churchill’s victory speech and I met lots of people I knew from England, men and women. Then we went to the Monty club which was in one of those tall Brussels buildings – you could get lovely teas there and females could go there for a bath, hairdo, manicure – all sorts of things and all free.

Then we got on a tram and drove all round Brussels. We joined dancing throngs in the streets who would grab us as we went by – they danced all day. We went in lots of clubs – we tried not to get drunk but they kept bringing out champagne that they had kept hidden during the war! In one club we met a group I had been stationed with at Winterbourne Gunner and they invited us to join them later that evening, at the top of the camp, sitting on a truck because it would be a good position to see the lights go back on in Brussels for the first time. Like England there had been blackouts for a long time.
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Hazel Furney had visited several Italian cities from San Severo:

In May 1945, ‘Coote’ and I were planning leave and hoped to get to an island called Vis in the Adriatic, but it was looking like a forlorn hope as the sailing boat that went there would probably be too full. ‘Coote’ had had a letter from Evelyn Waugh who had been in Yugoslavia, and was an old friend of hers, telling her he’d been told to leave by Tito because he wasn’t a communist, so he was sure that she would never get in! When the morning of our departure came, and with it the news that Venice had been liberated, we changed our plans for Vis with an idea of getting to Venice. We got a plane from our airfield to Rome, where we stood outside a hangar, asking every passing pilot if he was going to Venice, and an American said he was and before long we were winging our way there. On landing which, needless to say is on the mainland, we were picked up by someone in a Jeep and, as we were driving along the causeway, our eyes popped out as we passed two car loads of senior German officers, sitting up with grim faces in their own vehicles but with our military police as escorts.

On arrival, we got a gondola and as soon as we reached the Grand Canal, we found ourselves among gondola loads of New Zealanders. They had liberated Venice, but the war was officially over in Italy by then, so it was a peaceful hand-over. They all cheered and waved at us and we at them. One lot had hired a violinist to play bacaroles while they lolled back savouring the occasion.

‘Coote’ met up with an old friend who’d been liberated from a POW camp and decided to stay, rather than be repatriated. He was one of her upper crust friends and confided to me that until he’d been taken prisoner he’d never had to dress himself. On arriving in Venice his first move was to book a box at the Opera House for the season! He gave us a chit saying we could use it, which we did, taking along two Guards officers we’d met. We saw the ‘Masked Ball’. The programme was all written in German and Italian and only ‘Coote’ had seen it before and had forgotten the story, but it was such lovely music that it didn’t matter.

After two or three days the town filled up with service people like us on leave. On VE Day, partisans were shooting rifles all over the place. One of the many people we knew who turned up was an old friend of mine from Belgian days. He said it was much more frightening than crossing the Po.

On VE Day, in the middle of St Mark’s Square, the Italians burned all the stuff that had been protecting the statues and danced round it. There were lanterns strung up on the gondolas, several buildings were flood lit, and music resounded everywhere, while we just watched it all. I suppose our soldiers were battle weary and just glad it was over, which we had known would happen any time. This was a memorable evening just the same, and for that reason I’ve never been back.

We had met forty seven people in Venice that we’d known elsewhere at various times, and I don’t think we ever had to pay for a meal!

We hitched back to San Severo to find a mad rush on as we were going to Naples the next day to be shipped home on the Empress of Scotland, in convoy in case not all the ‘U’ boats knew it was over!
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Suzie Morrison and her husband had returned to the UK in August 1944 on a troopship in convoy from Naples to Liverpool. It took sixteen days as the convoy circled right out into the Atlantic and U-boat alarms sounded. Suzie returned briefly to Medmenham and was then demobbed to have her first baby. Among others, Pamela Dudding of the ‘first Medmenham alliance’ and Mary Winmill, whose first married home had been adjacent to ‘The Dog and Badger’, had also left to start families. By coincidence, two Second-Phase PIs, Diana Byron and Lavender Bruce, by then both married, had their first babies in Penzance Hospital within a few days of each other in October 1944.

Dorothy Colles returned to Medmenham from San Severo in March 1945. After ‘demob’ she attended St Martin’s School of Art but later returned to Medmenham to paint twelve of Garfield Weston’s grandchildren; he was the owner of Wittington Hall, next door to Danesfield. She also worked for the Jordanian government, producing records of ancient sites as well as painting portraits of the king’s family. She concentrated on portrait painting, of children in particular, working in oils and pastels. She had started painting children in wartime Italy and Hazel remembered her getting down and playing with them on the floor to get a natural pose. Dorothy had several exhibitions in London, one that featured the paintings produced as a result of her sketches made around San Severo. Many of her PI colleagues from those days attended and were able to buy their favourite landscape to remind them of the days they had spent in Italy.