Four Years In A Lifetime A Lifetime In Four Years

June 1941 Chapter 1

I was 17 years old or even 17 years young, dressed in my best, with the feel of adventure coming on. I wore a grey boucle cloth coat very pale with a silver grey fur collar, grey lizard skin shoes with square toes and squared off heels. What dress I can’t remember exactly but I think it was brown with turquoise swathed front, it certainly was my favourite and I did not have that many.
It really was an adventure, I’d never travelled so far alone, and Leeds to Bridgenorth seemed along way. The trains then ran more or less on time, and this one had a corridor so you could go to the loo or stretch your legs, but it was getting very full so you needed to be back in your compartment before the train came to a halt in any of what seemed like dozens of stations where even more people packed into the train.
Bridgenorth…….A smallish place and the WAAF training station was a collection of wooden huts with a parade ground, the admin office, the equipment section, the cook house, and sick bay etc. Huts in one area for the permanent staff and huts for the new recruits.
We were met at the railway station by lorries into which we had to climb with our luggage (minimum) one case with bare necessities. When we arrived we were led to our billet a hut holding 32 beds a door at each end, windows of course and at one end a small private room occupied by our corporal. We sort of chose our beds, depending on where you were in line. The recruits, some were from the same area and had become a group on the train, some were young and some were to me much older, my sister’s age group.
The groups who entered the hut before me were still in those groups and quickly chose beds one end or the other. I ended up midway with some girls of my own age.
We were shown the ablution blocks, toilets and wash rooms and invited to test them out, and then taken to the cook house for a meal, somewhere along the way we acquired a knife fork and spoon and an enamel mug. We ate etc, I don’t remember what, and then we were herded back to our huts to make up our beds and retire for the night.
The beds were iron framed with metal springs and these biscuits, three square hard mattress type things that went together to form the mattress to sleep on. No sheets, one pillow and two blankets. So we obeyed instructions and made up the bed.
The groups had already formed and didn’t change much throughout our induction period. At one end, the first ones in the hut were the townies seemingly, at the other the quieter lot (at that time) rather aloof. Later I discovered that they had all work experience mostly in teaching, clerical work, bank clerk’s etc established jobs which they had chosen to give up to join up. Us in the middle were mostly like me ex grammar school or private school or young people who had gone into service in private houses when the war and compulsory enrolment had loomed and had chosen the WAAF instead of the land army, nursing, factory work or the other two services. To most of us our first night was quite a shock. At one end we had, as I said, the townies, they seemed to me to come from another planet, they chattered, brushed their hair and mostly left their make up on and were seemingly unabashed by having to undress in public. A lot had really fancy underwear proper bras, we made our own, smoked cigarettes, chewed sweets chocolate etc. Their conversation was alien to me, men seemingly and endless supply, film stars, latest films, latest popular songs and sexual adventures.
The other end conservatively dressed, tweeds, raincoats and sensible shoes and hats, undressed under dressing gowns or blankets and talked quietly but audibly about what they had left behind and quite a few knelt by their beds to pray.
It was for us in the middle similar to a tennis match as our heads turned from one end to the other before we suddenly realised what we were doing and grinned at each other I took my clothes down to my slip and then took my stockings off. I’d already been to the ablution block with a towel and a toilet bag where I’d followed the house routine i.e.:- toilet then wash and clean teeth and brush hair, so I climbed into bed and managed to put my pyjamas on after I had peeled off my undergarments with what I had hoped was a little decorum, after all we were all strangers. My group (the middle section) executed a similar strategy and then I can remember so clearly the idiocy of it all hit me and I got the giggles, it was infectious, Peggy and Sally got it first and soon we were all laughing and probably near to tears too as we once again took in the situation at both ends and found that they were pretty silent.
Then it was lights out. Silence, we were all in some awe of the hut corporal who on reflection looked a little butch in her smart uniform and parade ground stance and she gave orders. So to bed….sleep came because I was exhausted.
Next morning and oh what a morning. We were rudely awakened by the corporal at 6 o’clock. None of us were ready for that, then the ablutions, beds stripped, biscuits piled up, blankets folded and put on top and then the tick pillow. We mostly dressed in what we had worn the previous day, except because it was raining a few of us had Mac’s of sort and some of us had flat shoes, but we were a motley crew when we were lined up for the cook house. The townies, well mostly, had dresses and cardigans and heeled shoes of various styles, some had small jackets, well it was June but very wet.
Thirty two bewildered, unhappy girls/women, very wet hair styles…townies again, mostly permed often bleached, bedraggled rats tails, make up… a few had used everything that they had got, feet soaked and wobbly heels, we must have been a sight to see. Breakfast over utensils etc sluiced and dipped into a hot tank of water and then taken away from us. Back to the hut with a now male Sergeant and the female corporal, where we were given a diatribe about keeping the hut clean and a detailed timetable of what was in store for us that day.
1st A medical
2nd Equipment store
3rd Hut
a) to put our gear away b) Sweep and mop each bed space and the area of communal space between them.
1st Medical….Strip off etc were they thorough, they even rechecked my sprained ankle which had delayed my induction for a month. Two of the townies had something wrong, but only one stayed late we heard from one of her friends that she was pregnant or as her friends put it “ Silly moo got a bun in the oven” Two more were left during the 1st month and another went into hospital with appendicitis ; the rest of us did the whole six weeks course and now at home in our uniforms waited for a chance to take our civvies home, we got and 72 hour pass and our postings for when we returned for our kit and travel warrants.
I never saw or heard from any of them again some were posted together but mine was a single posting to Mountbatten, Plymouth.

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