Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary

Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary Joan Rice A moving and personal account of a young woman’s experiences of the Second World War from the mother of Sir Tim Rice.Joan Rice had the same ambitions as many young women of her generation: she wanted to write; wanted to travel; wanted to be famous. With the outbreak of World War II she hurried to enlist – aged 20 – in the Women's Auxillary Air Force, hoping for change, for adventure, and for the chance to 'swank around in uniform'.Throughout the early years of the conflict she kept a regular diary of her life as a WAAF. Working first at RAF Hendon, she soon moved to a job in British Intelligence, and ultimately to postings in Egypt and Palestine. She witnessed the 'phoney war' explode into the Battle of Britain, lived through the London Blitz and was forced by Rommell's advance to flee Cairo. But her diary also tells the story of everyday war life, of the social whirl of service society and of her very first encounter with the man who would become her husband.‘Sand in my Shoes’ is a compelling first-hand account of life and love in a defeated Europe. Written with flair and exuberance, Joan's story has lain untouched for some fifty years. Incorporating additional material from her husband's own notes, her diary is a testament to the many women who kept the RAF in the air. JOAN RICE Sand in My Shoes Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF's Diary In memory of Hugh, my husband of forty-six years. And in memory also of those young Hurricane pilots of 504 Squadron who fought so bravely in the Battle of Britain. SAND IN MY SHOES (Frank Loesser/Victor Schertzinger) Sand in my shoes, sand from HavanaCalling me to that ever so heavenly shoreCalling me back to you once moreDreams in the night, dreams of HavanaDreams of a love I hadn't the strength to refuseDarling the sand is in my shoesDeep in my veins the sensuous strainsOf the soft guitarDeep in my soul the thunderous rollOf a tropic sea under the stars, That was HavanaYou are the moonlit mem'ry I can't seem to loseThat's why my life's an endless cruiseAll that is real is the feel of the sand in my shoes (Instrumental Interlude) Deep in my veins the sensuous strainsOf the soft guitarDeep in my soul the thunderous rollOf a tropic sea under the stars, That was HavanaYou are the moonlit mem'ry I can't seem to loseThat's why my life's an endless cruiseAll that is real is the feel of the sand in my shoesSand in my shoesSand from Havana. Table of Contents Epigraph (#u3649374b-3b32-587d-903f-b46108fb3453) Foreword by Jonathan Rice (#uf986dfac-a03e-5234-8c18-1ba5f10434f6) Introduction (#u4f5d2b38-ea42-5099-a5b6-81a32b945c92) Part I: Hendon, The Phoney War (#u70eda844-f44e-5d57-a4c5-2d00464a3293) 1939 (#ub6d3c84a-e150-5af0-872c-42ec6467c4c4) 1940 (#u92c775ec-2b10-57cd-b3ed-15c69dfc7432) 1941 (#litres_trial_promo) Part II: Medmenham (#litres_trial_promo) 1941 (#litres_trial_promo) Part III: Egypt (#litres_trial_promo) 1942 (#litres_trial_promo) Afterword by Eva Rice (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Praise (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) FOREWORD (#u40cf5856-3134-5030-ad94-f36206ff0be2) When Mother asked if we thought it would be a good thing to type out her war diary for the family to read, we politely said yes. We assumed there would be no real heroics in there, but we did not really know what Mother had done in the war (apart from get married in Cairo – oops! I've given away the ending) so we did not quite know what to expect. And even though we knew that Mother was a good writer, we did not expect anything like this. For those of us lucky enough to be born after the end of what proved to be the last World War of the twentieth century, 1939 is beyond our imagination. L.P. Hartley's description of the past as ‘a foreign country’ is not powerful enough: for those of us who have been civilians all our lives, those war years are a different world. We grew up in the shadow of war, maybe, but it never became a reality. We never had it so good, as Harold Macmillan never said. My parents were among those unlucky ones who were of a generation who had to fight. But, to read their diaries, we might feel that in many ways they were the lucky ones. As my mother's diary makes very clear, she enjoyed the war most of the time, ‘Never in my life have my days been so round and so snug,’ she writes in 1940, ‘and this is a war, a clash of civilization. It is odd.’ For my brothers and me, my parents' war experiences were crucial, because without the upheaval that Hitler caused, my father and mother would never have met, and we – my brothers, our children and our grandchildren – would not be here. We are not unique, of course: there are millions of us all over Europe, America and elsewhere who owe their existence to Hitler's decision to invade Poland in September 1939. No wonder Europe was entirely reshaped by the war, and not just in terms of national borders traced on maps. Hitler's pursuit of his belief in the ideal of a Master Race proved to be an Orwellian reality, probably resulting in a greater mongrelization of Europe than any other single event in history. I am proud to be one of those mongrels. It is a very strange sensation to read the diary of your mother, especially when it deals with the time before you existed. In many ways, the person revealed in this diary is a stranger, a woman who happens to have the same name as my mother. If I didn't know it was Mother who had written it, I would never have guessed. When we were growing up, I never noticed the determination and ambition that are revealed in the diary, never thought of Mother as a person who had ever scored three goals in a hockey match, or who actually enjoyed gardening, or who ever smoked. Yet here it is, a true picture of the young woman who, within seven years of finishing her diary, would be mistress of a vast crumbling farmhouse with three sons rushing around her feet. I never remember her remarking, as she does in the diary, ‘Housework is nothing like as soul-destroying as typing.’ But I am still worried about the entry for 31 March 1941. She was in hospital, sharing a ward with ‘thirty bawling brats’, an experience which, she writes, ‘has soured me as a confirmed child hater.’ Not the person I know. Mother's ambition to be a writer was the one thing that never flagged. I remember throughout our childhood hearing the clatter of the typewriter as Mother somehow found time between school runs, dog walking and keeping Popefield Farm in some sort of order, to write another short story, or a piece for Woman's Hour or Punch. It seemed to us quite natural that a person could earn money from writing and broadcasting, because Mother did. She never had time to write that epic novel, for which the three of us must be largely to blame, but she was a good and regularly published writer. We all, to a greater or lesser extent, have followed her example. Neither of my parents were ever remotely military people. They never spoke about their war experiences, except to tell us of their wedding day or self-deprecatory anecdotes about why Father never won the M.C. or about his German measles in the invasion of Sicily. We found it odd (as did Father) that his tailor persisted in addressing him as Major Rice over a decade after the war had ended and he had been demobbed, and it has only really occurred to me now, on re-reading the diaries, that none of my parents' wartime colleagues became friends after the war. I do not think I ever met any of the people mentioned in the diary, apart from those that Mother knew from before the war and with whom she remained friends for years, in one case to this day. The war was a break in existence, and it was clearly one they were both eager to put behind them as soon as it was all over. I also have to keep reminding myself how young Mother was when the war began. It was only a fortnight or so after her 20 birthday. I was at university on my 20 birthday, the extent of my worries being which pub to celebrate in. When she went to view the Blitz damage in Kilburn, she noted one shop, ‘where I used to buy my school hats’, which hadn't a window left. She would have been buying her school hats there only three or four years earlier. It must have been terrifying to be part of ‘a generation without a tomorrow, alive and beautiful in our lovely today.’ On board a ship to Egypt, aged 22 and a half, she gets into a deep discussion about the state of the world, and notes, ‘it's a dreadful and depressing thing if the men with ideals and intelligence are already so disillusioned that they will not even fight for the future. And then Diana came over, and Roger, and we played a game of deck quoits.’ The answer to everything when you are 22, a game of deck quoits. Jonathan Rice January 2006 INTRODUCTION (#u40cf5856-3134-5030-ad94-f36206ff0be2) In 1939 I was nineteen years old, living with my parents in the small Surrey village of Claygate. We had a detached house, a largish garden, a car in the garage. Our comparative prosperity was a recent event; my parents, whose financial highs and lows had punctuated my childhood, had found themselves three years earlier on a high. I was now a typical middle-class unmarried daughter. I had left school at just seventeen with matriculation. No thoughts of higher education were considered. Universities were not an option for girls except for the brilliant few or those with wealthy parents who did not consider a university education a waste of time for their daughters. Like many of my contemporaries I went to a secretarial college and from there to a job as a shorthand typist. I was considered to be one of the lucky ones. I was taken on by the Asiatic Petroleum Company (Shell) which – according to the principal of my college – chose only the cream of the cream. As the cream we were paid top salaries, ?2 10s (old money) a week as opposed to the ?2 paid by the next most desirable firm – ICI. (#ulink_58e1db86-c4d3-5459-8a81-5be4e01b91f5) My fellow typists in Bitumen, the department to which I was assigned, were a pleasant lot; the work, if boring as far as I was concerned, was far from arduous and the attitude of Shell towards its female staff was positively paternal. We might have to wear a uniform provided free by the firm – navy-blue serge in winter, beige shantung in summer – until we reached the rank of senior secretary, but unlike the men and almost everyone else in those days, we did not have to work on Saturday mornings. There was a staff canteen where we were provided free with morning coffee and afternoon tea, and an excellent lunch at bargain prices. On Fridays, just before pay day, a satisfying dish of chips and peas and lashings of gravy could be bought for five (old) pence. Our leisure hours were equally well catered for. On the river at Teddington near where I lived was Lensbury, the firm's palatial sports club where just about every sport was provided for and where there were weekly dances. In Claygate itself there was a tennis club and an amateur dramatic society. Nearby Richmond had an ice-skating rink. The cinema was a walk across the common to Esher. I had a bicycle; I was learning to drive. It was the sort of life most girls of my class were contented with until they were married. I wanted to get married, of course, since the alternative was to end up a despised spinster like the head of our typing pool, an old woman of forty, pitied and mocked by us younger girls. In my depressed moments I saw that as being my fate. I was not a success with my male contemporaries. However hard I tried to conform to the then social climate where men called all the shots, they seemed to sense that I was different in an undesirable way. My ambitions were not the ambitions of my contemporaries. I wanted to write; I wanted to travel; I wanted to be famous. But all I got were rejection slips from editors, and how could I save up for a world trip on ?2 10s a week? Then, in September 1939, war was declared. This was my opportunity, I seized it immediately. I joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). This diary covers the years from September 1939 to December 1942, by which time I was engaged. Thereafter until the end of the war if I wanted to write up any goings on, I did so in letters to my fianc?, later my husband. For the first eighteen months of the war I was posted to the RAF Station, Hendon as a secretary, progressing from ACW2 (#ulink_27ad8864-9d2f-5bfc-9ce9-d188af161a06) to corporal, and where the so-called ‘phoney war’ eventually gave way to the Battle of Britain and the bombing of London. RAF Station Hendon also had its share of air raids during this period. In May 1941 I was commissioned and posted to RAF Medmenham as a photographic interpreter. (#ulink_14f00e35-5be2-52c3-8457-4fd62fadd8b6) This, for me, was the least enjoyable period of my WAAF career, but it led in January 1942 to an overseas posting to Egypt. There I remained for two years, except for an interlude when the WAAF members of our unit were evacuated to what was then Palestine. (We owed this abrupt departure to General Rommel and his army who had come dangerously near to occupying Cairo.) In this, final section I have included excerpts from my husband's own diary. In January 1944 I was given a compassionate posting back to England. My husband, after service with the Eighth Army through the desert, Sicily and Italy, had also returned home to join the preparations for the Second Front. As a result I became pregnant and left the WAAF in the summer of 1944. In November that year the first of our three sons (#ulink_e9f86971-b61b-5143-9acf-dad1e6209dbc) was born. Joan Rice (#ulink_21332068-d47e-5a0d-8170-41e5d916f634) Imperial Chemical Industries plc. (#ulink_86a9d811-7c2f-554f-b299-3e2114b026d7) Aircraft Woman 2nd Class. (#ulink_14cc1eb8-7bb8-58ea-8ff0-2a63976131e4) Photographs of enemy territory were taken, brought back and examined for any relevant information. (#ulink_58e1db86-c4d3-5459-8a81-5be4e01b91f5) 1944 Tim. Lyricist, author and broadcaster 1947 Jonathan. Author, broadcaster and lecturer 1950 Andrew. Advertising guru (South Africa) and broadcaster PART I Hendon, The Phoney War (#u40cf5856-3134-5030-ad94-f36206ff0be2) 1939 (#u40cf5856-3134-5030-ad94-f36206ff0be2) 20 September 1939 I'm a member now of the WAAF but I must begin from the beginning. On Tuesday afternoon I went along to Ariel House, Strand, to see if I could be enrolled. A few of my particulars were taken and I was told to wait until the recruiting officer could see me. I sat on a bench with a lot of other women and the hours went by. After long ages she did see me, looking very snappy with red hair and the Air Force uniform which, barring the awful shoes and stockings, is quite good. She talked a lot about did I know what I was doing and service discipline, and saying they wanted people badly at Hendon with good shorthand and typing, then sent me to another woman to fill in a form. That done I was told to return for the medical exam this morning. I have passed and am now in the RAF. I begin with 2s 3d a day in contrast to those not on special duties who only get 1s 4d, and I may (I hope) have to go abroad. I am now waiting to be called up to Hendon. I'll explain my reasons for joining. Firstly, doing one's bit. I suppose that's there, though it doesn't seem particularly in evidence at the moment. Secondly, this life will get me away from home, make me adult and independent. Thirdly, it's a change and adventure. Fourthly and at the present most strongly, I want to swank around in a uniform. I had lunch with Mother at the Bolivar today. There were girls, smart and sophisticated, drinking with men at the bar. I felt about fifteen. I want to be able to be at any time at ease, with poise and sophistication. I hope this new life will help me. It will be experience. Sitting in Claygate isn't going to teach me about life. The WAAF should. When the war is over I want to be fully equipped to go back immediately to my goal of successful writer. If I'm alive and there's any civilisation alive, I'll do it. Meantime this diary goes with me to Hendon. 8 October 1939 I am sitting on Betty's (#ulink_67664891-af03-546c-ac04-f72da8426604) bed (a Shell colleague, now living with my parents). Opposite on my own is a pile of belongings and a far too small suitcase. Herewith the events leading up to my last day at home (excuse legal phrasing but I have just returned from making my will). I look at my packing and have the same sick and ‘wish I hadn't done it’ feeling in my tummy that was there on going back to the convent (boarding school) evenings. Only tonight have I realised that I'm going into this new unknown living. Even at Bunty's (#ulink_e34365f2-7a21-5077-817f-59dadc36b7db) (a school friend with whom I had been staying), when she and her mother made up absurd adventures about me in the Air Force which ended with me dropping from the air onto a submarine, and much laughter in which I joined, it was impossibly far away. Even when Mother phoned and said I was to go on Monday it was still impossible to happen. Now it is my last night at home and no one but you must know how I feel or I's probably cry. Because of that it's going to be good for me. I've got to be adult. I've got to be self-assured. I've got to be able to go anywhere and not be shy. At least I'll have you with me. 9 October 1939 First Day in the life of a WAAF. It began with rain and nearly missing the train at Claygate; more rain, heavy bags and misery in the Strand; more rain, going the wrong way and arriving late at Hendon. Soaked and surly I filled in a ‘history sheet’ and went in the rain to my billet which is, or rather are, the old married quarters of the RAF. After that we went up to get our equipment which at the moment consists of one oversized raincoat and a service gas mask. Then we had to walk in the rain to the aerodrome to be vaccinated by a very large, very silent, very alluring doctor. Next the lunch, a dubious stew and a paper piece of tart eaten on one plate and a tin-topped table. After that a gas lecture and a mask demonstration. Next tea, a fish cake and bread and jam, and then ? la libert?. I have managed to cultivate a friendship with a girl called Joyce (#ulink_f03b1640-7585-5efb-b1da-90f4b529ce73) who has a car and we went out on a voyage of shopping and discovery. We discovered little except that the car wouldn't go and spent most of the time pushing it. Coming home I put on slacks and the rest of our house mates came in – the NCO (#ulink_aa13d90f-8a3d-500f-862d-6ceded364590) (a nice girl called Mike) and a girl called Scotty with a squashed-in face – and we drank tea and listened to them talking. I must go to bed now. It's heroic writing this. 15 October 1939 It's unbelievable that to go from Hendon to home all that needs to be done is a short train journey. The two worlds are so much further apart than a journey through a wasteland; howling wind and outer darkness seems fitting to bridge the gap. Even now at home this evening I belong here no longer. I should have had my leave from Sunday night to Monday night, but on Saturday evening I learnt that I'm to be transferred to Ruislip tomorrow and so was allowed home before the change. I'm lucky to get a permanent job so quickly. Hendon is a training centre for the WAAF and most people are there longer than I've been. The thing I've hated most about Hendon is having no definite work but hanging around a crowded orderly room all day with nothing to do and everybody looking at you as if you should be busy. In fact, had I written this up last Tuesday (can I possibly have been in the Air Force only six days?), I would have reflected on the deepest depths of despair to which the human soul can reach. I was so miserable I could no longer think nor reason, just move in a fog of despondence. Fortunately misery cannot go on being misery eternally (that's why hell's such a dumb idea), and my emotions rose until now, when I'm glad that while the war is on I'm in the WAAF. After this war I might be quite well off. Shell are saving one pound a week for me for the duration in addition to my Provident fund (staff who volunteered for war work were still considered as employed by Shell), and I've heard that we may get gratuities at the end of the war. I'll have to go back to Shell for a bit for decency's sake and then Heigh Ho for the world and adventure. I haven't told you yet all about life in the WAAF but I'm going to have a bath and will maybe write more later. (Much later in the afternoon. Raining and raining and raining outside and us all warm before the fire.) We light a fire in the downstairs room and sit around it, singing sometimes with a girl called Renee, (#ulink_076a6ea6-3bf6-5062-acd3-05ca8d013238) just back from Germany, playing the accordion, and sometimes talking and going one by one to the bath if we have managed to coax the boiler into a blaze. I like all the girls in our house except the one called Scotty who unfortunately is in the same bedroom as me. I think there's something wrong about her. I've heard Mickey (#ulink_af2526c7-67b2-5507-9f74-8f164579c456) and Joyce talking about it but they won't tell me. I must look innocent. It's very annoying. The working part of the day is, as I've said, foul (I am a trained secretary) but you can get out of most of it by going to games and drill. The food is really quite good if the way of eating it very primitive. I shudder to think of my table manners when this war is over, but I shall be tough what with marching, early rises and hard beds. They have some very good cheap cinema shows in the aeroplane hangars, concerts for the troops and games in the evening like fencing and badminton. 16 October 1939 Would you believe it? After all I'm not being moved. When I got back from leave yesterday I was told that the commanding officer wanted me to stay, and Frances (our NCO) told me kindly that she likes to hang on to efficient people. Well, I'm all for it. I like it here now. I like my billet companions except the before-mentioned Scotty, but there's hope she'll be going soon. I like the free concerts and cheap cinemas and railway service tickets, and the coming glory of a uniform and being different to the herd. I've also heard there's a library on the Station and that a hairdresser has been installed to shampoo and set for 1s 6d a time. I'm all for the RAF. I'm beginning to be proud of the company and myself and spent the evening polishing my shoes, washing my stockings and pressing my mac. I like most of all being independent. (I mean free from the bondage of a life at home that there must be in the best of them. You can't grow up till you leave your parents. I know that now.) I'm sitting writing this before the fire, waiting till Pat finishes with the bath. Upstairs Mike and Frances and Mickey are cleaning their rooms in readiness for tomorrow's billet inspection, and I've just heard them say that another lot of propaganda pamphlets went off from here to Germany today. Despite events like that though you might be miles away from any war here – there's no time to talk about it. Ah ha, this diary now contains a STATE SECRET. 19 October 1939 We had a concert tonight over in one of the furthest aeroplane hangars, and the first half was broadcast as from ‘Somewhere in England’. A great many photographs were taken of the female artists with the RAF and the male artists with the WAAF, and also numerous news-reels. As I was unfortunately at the back of the hall I doubt if my bright camera-smiling face will flash over England. In the interval Joyce and I pushed our way through the mob and got Will Hay to autograph our programmes. The programme was too long and somewhat patchy, the community singing being the best, especially our rendering of ‘I'll See You Again’ and ‘Tipperary’ which always makes me want to cry. We marched back in the dark with Ely (an NCO) running up and down the long, long line shouting at us to keep in step and not hold hands and not talk and not sing, and then at the gate being nice again and saying ‘Goodnight – sleep well’. Now we're sitting in our bedroom in various stages of night attire and translating one of the German pamphlets illegally obtained and feeling like we're having a secret meeting. 20 October 1939 (early in the morning before reporting for duty) The night before last the Special Police on the aerodrome gave a dance and forty of the WAAFs, which included all our house except Mickey Johnston, went to it. It was pretty putrid really, the most oafish soldiers, and while Mike, Joyce and Scotty got lifts home, Pat and I came home with a frightful soldier, very fresh, whom we just couldn't shake off. Renee was sitting on the doorstep waiting for us and Mike had the late pass key! After waiting in the cold for about twenty minutes and calling Mike every name we could think of (my vocabulary has increased considerably since living here), we broke in the back window and made hay with Mike's bed and removed her pyjama cord. With that and other things we didn't get to bed till well after twelve and had to be up at some ungodly hour. Last night I accepted the invitation of the girl next door but one to go fencing with her, but after a long windy walk across the aerodrome we found the instructor wasn't there. However, she took me back and gave me hot soup and we made plans for our lives after the war. I'm never, never going back to shorthand typing. I'm going to Prague, probably to work in the British Institute and write the rest of the day. Mickey did that and will show me the ropes. 23 October 1939 I was ill with a cold all day Sunday after a horrible night upstairs sleeping with Mike as I just couldn't face a night alone with Scotty (Joyce being on leave). The day was pleasant with a continual string of visitors in the morning, tea and coffee and biscuits and books, and an afternoon almost asleep with the sun through the open window, and outside in the garden Renee and Deirdre gardening and laughing at Deirdre's jokes; and then in the evening Mike and Frances buying me chocolate and buns to supplement the invalid diet. Today, by a little push and a kindly fate, I snitched from a more senior typist an all-day job for the deputy commander and worked away at it voluntarily till 7.30 on the reasoning that nothing done for the Powers on High is wasted. It was a list of the girls to be posted permanently to Hendon and we – Frances, Mike, Joyce, Mickey and I are on it and SCOTTY IS NOT. If you know Scotty who smells and doesn't wash and who is loud, man-mad and crude you would understand our rejoicings. We've made wonderful plans for transforming our house when she's gone, washing it out and bringing comforts from home. I am so happy here now – it's a wonderful life. 29 October 1939 Sitting before the fire in the lounge, home on forty-eight hours' leave, a summary of thoughts and events seems appropriate. As the first is always easier I'll start with that and hope that the events will fit themselves in as I go along. Why I like the RAF. I like having no responsibilities. I like not having to worry about clothes and food and money, and what I am to do next. With all that taken care of and enough for me to do to keep me from being lazy, my brain can give all of its time to its work and here I am positively popping with ideas, and I prefer the ideas. Fortunately both Mickey and Frances write and when Scotty's gone (she goes Monday!) we shall have the downstairs bedroom for a living room and the little upstairs one for us three to retire and work in. Leaving this ‘no outside worry’ way of living to come home has unsettled me. I didn't want to hear how business is bad and how my mother had cried one night missing me. When this war's over I'm going away. I'm never being in a safe job again, and she'll not want it and perhaps they'll be poor and Shell will be a safe steady job. I won't stay. When this war's over, diary, I swear I'll be writing you in the capitals of Europe and the stranger places of the world, but I want not to have to feel guilty about it. 31 October 1939 It hasn't been the best of weeks. It began with my returning from leave not to a cheery household, but to a place so strangely deserted that I thought it was another Marie Celeste. I undressed before a fire someone else had lit, bathed in water someone else had heated, and stared at a half-finished cigarette someone else had smoked and all the while in an empty house. They returned in dribbles, Mike tired and touchy so that we all had to be careful with her for the evening, and Renee bossy and irritating. Since then the house has been parted by a pro Renee and a pro Frances battle over a girl called Reynolds whom Renee has foisted on No. 7 Booth Road. Last night Joyce and I had an orgy of cleaning to get our room clean now that Scotty has gone (plus, we fear, my blue hairbrush and Joyce's mascot monkey). While Renee spoke German to Mickey so that we couldn't understand and giggled, I scrubbed the floor and Joyce polished it, and between us we got the room immaculate. I like Joyce. She's plump with bright yellow hair and feet that look most attractive from behind when she walks. I'm very tired. Hence the low level of this entry of squabbling women is neither ennobling nor uplifting but positively fourth form. I must go and have a bath. 7 November 1939 I ought to tell you about the church parade on Sunday and the press photographers and Gaumont British News taking newsreels and photographs of us today, but I've got to report back for afternoon duty in about five minutes and while I write this our NCO is lamenting about the untidiness of the house. Really, living in this whirl of publicity it's going to be hard being nobody when the war's over. 8 November 1939 Last night a good time was had by all. Six of us went to a cinema at Hendon and saw an excellent French film called Drame de Shanghai. After the film we stumbled through the blackout to a restaurant where we ate frankfurter sausages and sauerkraut and laughed immoderately. On our return, Joyce's car refused to go and after pushing it miles down roads assisted by taxi drivers and pursued by buses the other four went home to sign us in before 9.30, leaving Joyce and me to park the car in the Hendon Way and walk across half the aerodrome to the MT (#ulink_864bb98f-5b60-5b02-aeef-96d53b2d9949) sheds and a driver Joyce knew who would retrieve and mend it for her. It was a wonderful walk – stars and a clear sky and the wind in our hair. Joyce and I are trying to get out of our present house for one where we can have a room to ourselves and a little less of this hearty communal living. 9 November 1939 Owing to the pleasing fact that all surplus No. 11 Company WAAF are being posted away from Hendon at a great rate, our previous billet, No. 7 Booth Road, was formally condemned and Joyce and I this evening moved into the top bedroom of No. 18. After No. 7, where every time you put the blackout down, part of the wall falls with it and where our bedroom was like trying to live and sleep on a dirty, busy railway platform, this is the Ritz Hotel. We have a large room intended for three but which we trust to keep exclusively to ourselves, and now we have got it straight we have to keep on looking to believe it's true. One thing it lacked was a table. Remembering that No. 7 was condemned anyway we decided that we, as well as anyone else, might as well enjoy the pickings. With this in mind Joyce and I carried out the table under cover of the blackout down Booth Road, but even in a blackout a table is not easy to disguise. We were caught on our new doorstep by Johnston, one of the girls downstairs, but were able to laugh it off airily and take it upstairs, without removing any great part of the staircase wall, where it now rests, very fetching with our wireless on it. Later in the evening Joyce returned to collect the last of her luggage from No. 7, while I washed and scrubbed in the bath. Frances and Mike and some chaps had returned from the cinema and cried angrily about the missing table. Joyce not only denied stealing it but questioned a justly indignant Mickey about its disappearance. She was about to depart when Frances asked if she could come round in the morning and see what sort of room we's got. ‘Yes,’ said Joyce, turning a little blue. The table is very large and very obvious. The situation is not what I's call happy. 13 November 1939 Coming back here from leave I was told that breakfast had been changed from the ladylike hour of eight to the grey and ‘still a few stars’ time of 7.15 in order that we may come back later and clean up our respective houses. Still, in compensation, the WAAFs themselves have taken over the cooking completely and everything now is cleaned and better and – excess of refinement – we have flowers on the tables. 15 November 1939 Coming back in the Tube, an overheard dialogue: ‘What's she?’ (I had my uniform on, at least all of it I've got which includes a hat.) ‘Oh’ – contemptuously – ‘Fire Service.’ (Me sitting there with ‘RAF’ bang in the middle of my uniform.) ‘Why don't you join it?’ ‘They only take all those society and titled people.’ Visible attempt from me to look society and titled. 20 November 1939 On Saturday Joyce and I and two other girls got given tickets for an ice hockey match at Wembley. We had simply super seats and enjoyed ourselves greatly, eating a great quantity of miscellaneous food and cheering immoderately. At about ten we left to see our home bus disappearing into the blackout. After forty minutes of waiting in the rain we were glad to see the next bus, so judge our disgust when the conductor told us that the last bus right through to Colindale went at eight o'clock A.M. After another wait we got a train to Wembley Park, and after a still longer wait in still heavier rain for a nonexistent bus we had to take a taxi back: not very kind on my slight finances. We had to be in by twelve as there had been a hell of a stink the night before when five WAAF came in at five in the morning from a night out at the Kit Kat Club with those forbidden gods, the officers. Yesterday everybody else in the house was out so I lit a fire, ate a lot, went to bed with a bottle and listened in the darkness to The Thin Man on our wireless, and then slept until woken up by Joyce dropping her Optrex bottle at one o'clock in the morning. On the bottom of her bed was a pile of books brought from her home, all of them asking that I read them, and I'm starting tonight on Clement Dane's Will Shakespeare. Tomorrow, those of us who were posted to Hendon move over to work at Station Headquarters, I with the job I've been hoping for: secretary to the Commanding Officer (CO), Mrs Rowley – small, dark, handsome, immaculate, sensible, intelligent, fair and so many things so few women ever are. Today I went up and collected my anti-gas clothing which consists of a five-times-too-large coat and a colossal hat. In all this, plus goggles and gas mask, I certainly shan't die of a gas attack. I'll be suffocated long before that. 25 November 1939 One day last week in the inevitable rain I went over to Bunty's on late leave pass. My hat had been borrowed by another WAAF – twelve of us had been chosen to take part in a Tommy Trinder (#ulink_2249a583-542a-5469-aae7-6e1454bcbf49) film and between us we had pooled our uniform resources to equip them creditably – and I arrived untidy, dirty and shabby but full of such confidence that neither clothes nor looks mattered at all. I ate enormously, had a bath there by torch light as of course the Goldies (#ulink_52ecc412-795c-5071-ad2b-6d830df9dc6b) had not got proper blackout curtains, and cleaner but with hair even more untidy went back to laugh and talk with Bunty, Bernie and Eric (#ulink_d47a29b6-b487-54a4-b909-45ec1e68b453) with such effect that Eric took me back as far as King's Cross. Sitting beside him in an empty Tube carriage and laughing with him over a coffee at King's Cross Station I tried to remember that a ‘to-be-remembered’ moment was happening and that I must savour it fully, but the time went on and then I was waving him goodbye, and when I was back at Hendon it was unreal and unhappenable. I wish I got these moods of get anything and confidence more often. When they come nothing can stop me. When I really want a thing it always happens. I've had my first promotion in the WAAF. I was reclassified on Thursday to ACW1 (#ulink_b198f587-83d1-5a23-ac7d-e77fdcd36d1c) from ACW2 and get, I think, sixpence more a day. I also went to Moss Bros today and ordered a second uniform (the first, I may say, is still to be issued to me), Mother having advanced me the money. I'm being fitted on Friday and it should be ready for me in ten days. I've optimistically and illegally had it made in officer's cloth. 29 November 1939 Such goings on. A girl called Single, known as Boompsie, who works over with 24 Squadron was in a room full of officers and who walked in but DAVID NIVEN, yes, really and truly, cross Single's fat heart. Single, needless to say, sat on immovable, to the surprise of her officer who had now finished with her, and looked and looked at the divine apparition. Rumour has it that he wants to join the RAF and still wilder rumour that he will be posted here. As a result WAAFs no longer go around as God made them, lanky hair, shining face and much dirt but have polished and pushed themselves into their pre-war shapes. A further story re David Niven comes from Ghisi, the girl downstairs in our new house. She got the message that a Mr Niven was arriving today and please arrange transport. Ghisi arranged and Mr Niven arrived. Ghisi looked at him and left the room. Outside a cackle of officers informed her it was DAVID NIVEN. Back rushed Ghisi to hear an also unsuspecting squadron leader telling poor Mr Niven that all the transport she had been able to arrange was a Singer van. Seeing the van Mr Niven murmured faintly he's get a taxi. ‘Well,’ said the squadron leader heartily, ignoring Ghisi's ‘It's the film star’ in sign language behind his back, ‘get one from Hendon, not Golders Green. It's 2 shillings cheaper.’ This evening I have battled with fire. I lit the bedroom fire five times and the boiler three and conquered them both. I must be like those odd natives with the gift of chucking live fire about. I can now pick up and carry smoking coals without inconvenience. I also used the two inside pages of Ray Atkinson's Daily Telegraph but will be in bed and asleep before she returns. 5 December 1939 Joyce is sitting on the floor with her feet in our beastly little fire which is sulking because I've made it burn, reading half aloud Clement Dane's Will Shakespeare and being anxious because she's forgetting how to act. I am lying on the bed in my issued vest and pants, a jumper, slacks, a cardigan, and a dressing gown and am only just warm. Last night both of us went to an airmen's dance way down in East Camp and had a very good time, meeting up again only when it was time to return, I feeling especially lucky in finding a North Country airman who could actually dance. We got in about one o'clock and consequently feel more than a little jaded now, especially after the perfectly beastly day. Our dearly beloved, our cherished Mrs Rowley has left us to go to Air Ministry. There's a faint hope that she may only be attached and not posted but it's too dim to comfort our desolate souls. I was surprised to find how much people had been jealous of me working for her and being made an ACW1. One girl (aren't women delightful en bloc?) went so far as to tell me that I was through and would be shipped to West Drayton without delay. West Drayton to the WAAF is what the most dreaded German concentration camp is to a Jew. (#ulink_579874d7-0d95-5cc2-8e95-36dbb9d59a76) Fortunately I am still well installed here and shall go on working for whoever is our next CO but I shall miss Mrs Rowley. You remember Eric who brought me home from King's Cross? When I was over at Bunty's on Sunday she told me that he had urgently phoned her up for my address and was much smitten. 8 December 1939 Yesterday I had a letter from Eric – a very nice letter asking me to choose any show I liked for Tuesday night and that he's take me. I've chosen Black Velvet, I will have my uniform and, as Bunty says he's very generous, I should enjoy myself greatly. I am not in the least in love with him but like him very much. I'll tell you about it Tuesday. 11 December 1939 I'm sitting before our fire, throwing out heat for once, having just finished a violent spring-clean of the room. Monday evening is the only time it gets any attention, Tuesday being an inspection. We both of us get up too late other days to do anything but get ourselves to work on time. Having forgotten to buy any flowers and there being no more in the gardens to steal I've piled four oranges and an apple on a plate for ornament and feel I owe it to the room not to eat them. Sitting where I am I fortunately can't see them. I wrote to Eric on Friday saying would he ‘phone me over the weekend to arrange a meeting’. He didn't and there's been no word today. I'm resigned now to it having been an illusion, an unreal impossible dream, but oh dear I would so have liked to have gone. 14 December 1939 Having heard me say that I was going visit-making up the road, our beastly little fire is burning with wildest abandon, intent obvious – to be out before my return. Incidentally, how does it manage to burn a whole evening and not heat the room a single degree? I went out with Eric after all on Tuesday. He hadn't been able to phone because of our telephone being out of order. Bunty and Bernie came too and it was quite enjoyable, but I saw him without the glamour of the rain and the wind and my own laughing abandon, and he's a very ordinary boy. Last night Joyce and I and her car, behaving itself for once, went to the pictures, smoking ourselves silly, and then coming back, spreading her rug before the fire and eating chips and my sponge cake from home, oranges and the last of Eric's chocolates, and I enjoying myself far more than the night before. We certainly are pampered in the WAAF. In addition to all MT drivers being forbidden to drive anything heavier than 15 cwt and no one allowed to work after four o'clock, we are to have masses of new equipment including still-expected snappy sports suits, TWO uniforms, brushes, combs and towels. The taxpayers are certainly doing us proud. 21 December 1939 Last night Joyce and I had a party. First I drank cider and then I drank gin and lime and then a concoction of Joyce's called Black Velvet and then gin and lime, and then I would have had a glass of sherry except that after two mouthfuls, swallowed in my urgent desire for the experience of drunkenness, Joyce drank the rest for me. I began to get very tired and just couldn't wake up to say goodbye when our guests went, and then the next thing I knew was that strange hands, e.g. Dillon and Firebrace, whose passes extended beyond ten o'clock, were undressing me. I endeavoured to sit up and protest against this outrage but they were both so much stronger than me that the rest of my clothes, to an accompaniment of soothing and infuriating murmurs, were taken from me. I got up a little later and was sick and then despite my shrieks that I wouldn't go to bed I was thrust into the blankets, given a bottle and then ignored when I wanted to talk with them. Today, chastened and sick in my stomach, I have been the centre of indulgent amusement, and sat tonight pensively sipping a very weak brandy and soda recommended to soothe my stomach in front of the downstairs room fire, feeling that, as an experience, once is enough of getting drunk. 25 December 1939 They let us have breakfast at half past eight, a very nice breakfast of Cornflakes, ham, hot rolls and coffee, and afterwards numerous people came along to our billet bringing with them cakes and fruit and nuts and chocolate and even a wireless and we huddled round the downstairs fire sipping sherry, eating oddments and talking. Lunch was excellent – the inevitable turkey and Christmas pudding with nuts and fruit and beer – and our officers and sergeants to wait on us. (#ulink_330c1b8e-c654-5ba6-a9ba-caed29e09c14) After lunch we repeated the morning's huddle round the fire till, at 6.30, we got ourselves out of our slacks and into reasonable clothes for the concert. It was an appalling concert but the airmen behind us were so amusing we laughed ourselves sick. After the concert came a social at the NAAFI (#ulink_9e04dace-1bdd-5578-a906-9ef69139cceb) for airmen and airwomen which we were all enjoying when the group captain removed the snarling WAAFs at eleven o'clock. From 11.30 to one o'clock we again sat round the fire eating and talking and so ended my first Christmas Day. Events of 1939 1 September Germany invaded Poland without a declaration of war. 3 September Britain and France declared war on Germany. 27 September Warsaw surrendered to the Nazis. 29 September National registration was carried out in the UK to supply the entire population with Identity Cards. 14 October HMS Royal Oak was sunk at port in Scapa Flow by a German U-boat; 833 men died in Britain's first heavy loss. 21 October Conscription began of men aged between twenty and twenty-three. 28 October The first German plane was shot down over Great Britain. 8 November A failed attempt to assassinate Hitler killed nine people in Munich. 30 November The Red Army marched into Finland. (#u30be51e1-ccef-435c-a206-6c9bfa5076fd) Betty Ross, who lived with my parents as a paying guest when Shell was evacuated. (#ulink_33a9b2ae-34d2-573f-8243-a1911a973d03) Bunty Goldie, now Bunty Jackman – still a close friend. (#ulink_21194bb2-404c-514c-ac27-197439b21db0) Joyce Davidge. (#ulink_21194bb2-404c-514c-ac27-197439b21db0) Non-Commissioned Officer. (#ulink_57e9bcf4-1378-5053-a185-1b889678a49d) Renee Bedell – who had been working for the British Council. (#ulink_57e9bcf4-1378-5053-a185-1b889678a49d) Mickey Johnston. (#ulink_9a86bef7-5967-5cb8-85ed-aa6451afe3c5) Motor Transport. (#ulink_672d206c-bcae-51a4-91fa-3c999183944e) A popular comedian of the time. (#ulink_f191b429-cfe6-5471-9f31-8101027f7018) Bunty's parents. (#ulink_f191b429-cfe6-5471-9f31-8101027f7018) Bernie and Eric were two friends of Bunty's; they all met at the Goldies' tennis club. (#ulink_f1e88617-716b-51fb-b1b4-10cd725ceeb8) Aircraft Woman 1st Class. (#ulink_a515b77d-a492-5296-a84f-09106c13ff69) By this time we had heard quite a bit about the existence of concentration camps within Germany. In 1938–9 there was a stream of refugees from Germany to the UK, mostly children, few of whom ever saw their parents again. (#ulink_a8f0fa63-ec81-5f05-8e4d-19871d971309) Officers waiting on other ranks is still the custom in the Armed Forces on Christmas Day. (#ulink_c0a9fb34-cf75-5ae3-8761-2a1e3a8a68c6) The Navy, Army and Air Force Institute runs shops and clubs for the Armed Forces, and then gives its profits back to the Services. 1940 (#u40cf5856-3134-5030-ad94-f36206ff0be2) 7 January 1940 Joyce and I have pulled the beds around the fire, stolen the pouffe from Peggy's bed downstairs, unpouffed it and spread it around the ground for us to loll against. On the beds are books and papers and cigarettes, on our dressing table are our eats for the evening: a loaf, butter, a Christmas cake and a tin of mushroom soup. Joyce has been lying on the floor battling for sound on our wireless, which is proving even less useful than our bloody little fire. We had a church parade today, fortunately in the smaller and considerably warmer hangar with a very enthusiastic parson who urged us to be pieces of rock between interludes of calling us miserable sinners. I regrettably had a long-distance flirtation with the trumpet player. On my return I was then chivvied by the sergeant to (a) walk straight and (b) swing my arms. The first I find impossible, the second objectionable and concentrating on achieving both spoilt the dreams I have to make marching endurable. One of the warrant officers passed a lovely remark on our return to the orderly room: ‘Now that you've finished your God bothering.’ 13 January 1940 Coming home on leave last night I bought Reader's Digest and found in it this perfect thing. It's supposed to be a song chanted by a four-year-old boy in his bath each night and his mother had managed to copy down this fragment: He will just do nothing at all, he will just sit there in the noon-day sun And when they speak to him he will not answer them, because he does not care to He will stick them with spears and put them in the garbage When they tell him to eat his dinner he will laugh at them And he will not take his nap because he does not care to, he will go away and play with the panda And when they come to look for him he will put spikes in their eyes and put them in the garbage He will not go out in the fresh air or eat his vegetables or make wee wee for them and he will grow thin as a marble He will do nothing at all, he will just sit there in the noonday sun. I went over to Lensbury to have lunch with Barbara (#litres_trial_promo) today (dear, kind, generous, delightful Shell, they paid all their staff, us serving members as well, a 10 per cent increase on their salary to cover the now increased cost of living and many weeks' back increase as well). 17 January 1940 Days go on and on and nothing important happens in them and then on a day like this it positively crams itself with incredible happenings. Little things first, equipment starts to arrive, first batches of uniforms after we have waited so long with promises of enough and coats for all by Friday, because WAAFs have frozen these last few days in the snow. The second excitement was my having a preliminary interview with a view to a code and cipher commission, which I don't think I'll be given because they consider me too young. I am sorry the description of the day's doings had been such an anticlimax but to be honest with you it's now many days later, I having been interrupted in the writing of it by a caller and then forgetting it and life being what it is the excitement is now ended. Anyway it's now 21 January. I have been out every evening since last Tuesday and consequently feel somewhat jaded. We (Joyce and I) have drawn up the beds and are leaning against them almost in a super colossal fire. We have borrowed (with permission) the wireless from Ray and Peggy. The food is on the washstand and we are waiting for two visitors to call on us. I have to clean my buttons, which is rather a bore. I am very dirty because it's too cold to wash but I don't care. I haven't made my bed for days because I have discovered that if I crawl out carefully it will still do. In short, the layers of ladylike-hood are peeling off pretty speedily and doubtless soon I shall smell. Oh well, what the hell. 29 January 1940 What a weekend! It began on Friday when Eric was taking me to the Little Review with a sore throat and that aching prelude to flu plus a depression caused by Joyce's Monday departure to a very good Air Ministry job, fortunately quite near Hendon. Feeling frightful and having to meet Eric, I stumbled into a chemist from the rain and blackout and demanded that he gave me something to pep me up for the night. Dubiously and unwillingly he gave me a bright brown scalding liquid like fifteen fiery cocktails combined (I do love alliteration), which not only put me on top form for the whole evening but has kept me there ever since. I enjoyed myself very much, we ate and danced and laughed loudly at the Little Review, which was slick and modern, clever and Oh! The genius of Hermione Baddeley as an ancient prima suprima, colisima ballerina, or the most Novelloist of Novello gipsy heroines! Afterwards we had a taxi back to Waterloo in which he was so good that I am afraid he may be wanting to be serious and he saw me off to Claygate asking if I's see the Gate Review with him on his next leave. He's a very nice boy, I don't want him to be hurt, but I've no feeling about him at all. On Saturday evening I met Joyce in town and we went over with some friends of hers to a dance at her old home in Blackheath. It was quite good fun but I would have enjoyed it more had my voice not been so faint but speaking seemed too great an effort to bother over much. I was supposed to return to Hendon last night but owing to the snow there weren't any trains. I had hell's delight getting back here (Claygate) on Sunday morning as every electric train had gently died on the nation. I eventually got a steam train as far as Surbiton (passing en route a notice flaunting the words ‘And still the railways carry on’). This morning there is still no train so I am back again by the welcome home fire warming up for a second attempt after lunch starting with a cab to Surbiton. I February 1940 I have been moved out of house number 18 to number 11 and have been put in temporary charge of it until the return of a very nice corporal friend of mine, Rene Le Mesurier. Its other inhabitants are old and staid and utterly law abiding with a conscience over helping with the housework. I am none of these, with a livid reputation for breakfast lateness. It's half past ten now, I'm on a pouffe before a very hot fire and a half-read American Ladies Home Journal. 8 February 1940 For weeks I've wantonly escaped it, tonight there was no further eluding it. I am on duty on the telephone. That unpleasantness means that you sit from five to nine in the WAAF Recreation Room, if you're like me with both feet in the fire, and when the phone rings you have to answer it and, depending on your conscience, say either ‘leave a message’ or ‘I'll see if I can find her’. On the wireless a frightful band of men are singing over and over again the same song interspersed with remarks of dullness about keeping on key and top Bs by another man with a shaking voice. I've got to keep it on, it's my only means of knowing six o'clock. I've got cigarettes, my knitting, this diary and a magazine. I can't sincerely be martyred, especially if I did want to go out, I've got no money and owe odd WAAFs 11/6d. Up and down Booth Road WAAFs are cleaning windows, hiding beer bottles and Dillon is reluctantly black-leading a grate. Big bugs from Air Ministry are coming tomorrow to billet inspect. My room will be the only one not with its morning face. The orderly sergeant has now arrived and is battling with the intricacies of the NAAFI finances. I've combined three good deeds tonight but I've resigned the struggle. I've helped the cooks wash up and I'm taking someone's place in the decontamination squad so that she can leave camp. I glow with a large pro-social feeling. 28 February 1940 Two weeks' interlude between this and the last entry represents a week in the WAAF sickbay with a cold and pink eye and five days in an isolation hospital with measles, separated by two delightful days of sick leave seeing both the Gate Review and Funny Side Up with Eric. I was talking while in sickbay with a girl about platonic friendship, the way you do get talking very late in the night with neither of you tired through too much bed, and she said it never worked because the very fact that you were men and women made one of you at some point, if only very briefly, have feelings for the other. That's true. Sitting beside Eric in Funny Side Up, he in his new undress uniform and I in the unaccustomed femininity of a pretty frock, this dialogue just over between us: Joan: ‘Mind you've caught my frock.’ Eric: ‘Joan, you're getting me in quite a state.’ Joan: ‘Is that the effect the frock has on you?’ Eric: ‘The frock or you.’ I got the first feeling I had for him of sentimentality but now it's gone and I feel nothing again. I read somewhere else that a woman who can inspire love and not even feel pity is a dangerous and unhappy character. 8 March 1940 I am becoming a most domesticated girl. The mornings see me sweeping, dusting and bed making and even cleaning the windows of my room, and most surprising, liking it. Housework, I see, is nothing like as soul destroying as typing. Lunch hour saw me in shirtsleeves and mackintosh apron standing before a sink, singing tunelessly the twiddly-pom bit of ‘Eighteenth-Century Minuet’ and faced with piles and piles and more piles of WAAF washing up. Washing up after meals now being compulsory, one of the vast growing number of unpleasantnesses that are compulsory these days. I can't say I enjoyed that but thought hard of soldiers being killed for England and me only being inconvenienced, which helped me along. Yesterday evening I decided not to go to the station dance as I had a cold, so put on slacks, many jerseys, mittens and a scarf and went out into the back garden where I weeded and dug and generally prepared the earth for its invasion of seeds on Sunday and finished off with a truly colossal bonfire which brought all the little boys from far and wide to watch the fun. Digging there in the mildness of an early spring evening, with the faint sound of other WAAF voices on the billet the other side and a few children climbing in and out of air raid shelters, left me at peace. I had no thoughts beyond the moment; all emotion had run out of the world; it was only the pleasant day and the earth heavy under my fork and my own satisfied tiredness. All this is probably just my way of saying there's something in this gardening racket after all. After, I came in to find Mickey roasting before my fire and we drank her soup, toasted my bread and ate my mother's marmalade. This morning I got an invitation to Barbara's wedding on 27th of this month and Our Annie, the hearty CO who has taken over from Mrs Rowley, has given me the afternoon off to go to it. 9 March 1940 This evening is Saturday. I had money and decided to go in to Hendon after tea. I walked round Woolworths, shed some several shillings and returned to Booth Road with arms containing bulbs in a pot, six packets of seeds, a face flannel, a tin of boot polish, a duster, a vase, flowers, needles and cotton, a garden trowel and a packet of soap flakes. Back in my room I've lit my fire, cleaned three pairs of shoes, washed several stockings and am preparing for a snug evening before a now burning fire mending clothes and listening to the wireless, supplemented by toast and Stork (#litres_trial_promo) and marmalade and climaxed by a bath. Yesterday evening Mickey and I and other deluded WAAFs went through the blackout and into the wilds of Hammersmith enduring the journey with the thought of the rollicking, witty West End show, Broadway Follies, studded with stars, to which we WAAFs had been invited free. I might say frightful, I might say terrible, awful, boring, tedious, but they only reveal the inadequacy of words. After the third hour, or so it seemed, I was convinced that I had died and was in hell, watching turn after turn in unending procession, each longer, each less funny, each more unbelievably bad than the last. During the interval, Hendon WAAFs rushed to the bar, scruffy WAAFS, obviously from West Drayton, sat still rollicking with mirth in the Stalls. We tossed back whisky and ginger beer and watched in a stupor the longer, duller, apparently unending second half. After came the journey back in the blackout made blue by our opinions of the evening. 11 March 1940 How nice it is to listen in the mornings to the BBC broadcasting physical jerks (#litres_trial_promo) when one has no intention whatsoever of doing them. Our Annie and I have practically no point of common interest. She's a large strapping woman with appalling legs and heaps of hearty laughter. Her spiritual home is in a damp tent with a smoking campfire and a brood of nasty little Girl Guides. In fact, I believe between being a general's daughter she was once a Girl Guide captain. I went with Mickey and Frances to the pictures tonight and came back arguing about politics and the future of England. Obviously England is a declining power; obviously Communism has come to stay; obviously the breaking of British class barriers is a long overdue necessity if the country's ever to survive. Do you realise only 3 per cent of our populace, the lucky percentage with a public school education, can ever hope to receive any of the really first-rate jobs? Oh, the colossal conceit of a country, to limit its selection of brain ability from a future 3 per cent. There is so much wrong with the world, so much in a nightmarish muddle. Still there is this consolation: it's a bad world but it's not a dull one. It's got evil and stupidity and muddle but it's also got excitement and adventure and variety. For the cynical, for the without illusions, one can still live zestfully and not yearn too unbearably for Utopia. 15 March 1940 I am home and tired, I've been out every night this week. Tomorrow morning I shall lie in a soft warm bed and stretch out a languid hand to my bell, which will bring my breakfast to me. Tonight I shall dissolve the grime of ages (three days and nights) in a large boiling bath. I've got to give up my room. The corporal whose rightful residence it is has decided she wants it and I am to have the front double room, so very much more to clean. I am sick and sorry; I like my room. I like the sixpenny and flourishing plant on the windowsill. I like the string from the light via the door to my bed which enables me to extinguish both light and wireless without getting back into the cold. I like it because it is little and easy to warm and has clean windows and a polished floor. I wish I were a corporal and not so tired. I am writing this all odd: it was going to be very artful introducing all the week's events in so natural a manner that one slipped easily into the other. Allow me, says she in her best pompous author manner, to take you from my usual haunts of Booth Road and Claygate and that part of London encircling Leicester Square into the hitherto unexplored region of Hendon Aerodrome. If we are lucky, as we enter its gates, the police on duty will salute me and make me feel very smooth. Why then, reader, do I hurry? Why have I paid unusual trouble with my toilet and clutch in my hand a limp paper when usually I saunter past late, untidy and sucking a Zube? I am going to a Messing meeting as a representative of WAAF airwomen, that's why – a role strangely thrust on me by Our Annie. We gather in the messing officer's room, the WAAFs waved politely to chairs, the airmen soldiers standing self-consciously behind us. After a pause, which I passed looking out of the window unaware that I was expected to speak and thinking how rude it was that nobody did so, I, as WAAF representative, am asked to complain first. I blushed a lot and said the WAAFs wanted more fruit. That noted, Pilot Officer Burton turned to the men and the fun began. They said their fried bread was hard. The sergeants, two harsh-faced individuals, said it was inevitable on account of the ovens; Pilot Officer Burton strove courageously to pacify both parties. Throughout the battle, which travelled through hard fried bread to bread at dinner to too thin tea, he remained courteous, fair and eternally anxious to help the men. This was definitely one of the better Service customs. The men get direct to the officers with their complaints. As a result of this morning meeting, far from finishing my work at the customary 4.15, when I left at 4.45 it was yet undone. At 5 p.m. when I was preparing to go to town, a trembling WAAF informed me that an angry Annie was on the phone demanding my return to finish my work. I returned swearing all up Booth Road and by the time I got to her my anger had surprisingly gone. I accepted, not very well concealing my smiling lack of penitence, her and Henderson's bawling, so that at the end they were smiling too. I like Henderson, she is small and attractive and tough. 20 March 1940 WAAF whisklets – Mr Dunne, giving Frances Baxter a packet of Smarties: ‘You've got a habit I don't like.’ Frances: ‘What's that?’ Mr Dunne: ‘You breathe.’ Mr Dunne is a civilian clerk under whose care we WAAFs at Station Headquarters are. He has promised to lift me one of those ‘You never know who's listening’ posters for my billet. Mickey Johnston has a driving test. ‘Don't let her drive inside the aerodrome,’ warns a sergeant to the girl who accompanies her on her test, suspecting Mickey's ability with tragic truth. From the WAAF Mess to the aerodrome gates Mickey takes the wheel. She flashes down Booth Road, her companion beginning to be uneasy and success and speed intoxicating her, and as she takes the corner sends two milk cans hurtling down the road. She misses a swearing stag-like leaping wing commander by inches and jams on the brakes to a halt in front of the frozen face of a station policeman. Mickey has not driven for some years and then only in Prague and on the wrong side of the road. The nearly run-over wing commander was very, very mad. Only much effort, not helped by Mickey's merry laughter as she sat in the van, destruction right and left, got her out of being put on a charge. 21 March 1940 In the afternoon Frances and Evans, with the solemn, nervously smiling faces of people who know their expressions ought to be sad, came to say, ‘We came to tell you something dreadful has happened. Oliver's husband has been killed.’ Oliver used to work with me; she's only been married six weeks; her husband was one of the Hendon sergeant pilots. He crashed near Birmingham and the plane caught fire. Later, I went into our officers' room and reminded Annie that I was having Wednesday off for Barbara's wedding, and Mrs Burley, the Code and Cipher Officer, said she too was going to a wedding on Wednesday. I said it couldn't be the same one and she said ‘Howroyd’, and I said ‘David’, and the whole room shrieked because it is the same one. After tea: sitting in the Recreation Room on guardroom duty, hearing more details about Oliver's husband, and everybody telling other dreadful accidents. 24 March 1940 Yesterday evening Bridget, Boompsie and I went to a dance at the Overseas Club to meet Canadians. Before I went I knew I was going to enjoy it, despite spots on my face through overeating and not being energetic enough. I had one of my moods when nothing mattered. Anyway the spots were only few and small and make-up covered them. When we got there a Paul Jones (#litres_trial_promo) was in progress and the end of it found me with an officer: very Canadian, very tight and a very good dancer. While others danced decorously around, we trucked and shagged and said ‘ha cha cha’, all his instructions to me being prefaced with a ‘honey child’. I felt like the whole of Gone With the Wind. By the time the next Paul Jones was over I was somewhat weary and ended that with a young French Canadian soldier who took me to supper and with whom I spent the rest of the evening. He's twenty-two and his name is Gerry. He's not good looking nor very well bred but he's young and fresh and I liked him a lot. I enjoyed it all. At the end both of us wanted to make a date. I was only able to tell him my address and as he's new to London and doesn't speak much English I doubt if it registered; pity because he was fun. This morning I was woken by Bridget at 7.30, said ‘what the hell’ and went to sleep till 9.30, when I had to tear to work without any breakfast. I had meant to have a quiet afternoon reading and gardening and having a necessary bath, but Eric phoned up and said he was free till seven o'clock, so I went up to town and we went to the zoo. He asked me out next Friday. I only have a French class, which I could have postponed, but I heard myself refusing. I cannot accept every time he asks me. That beastly sergeant who wouldn't give the men soft fried bread has been put on a charge for swiping coal; I'm very glad. 28 March 1940 This new diary is much too small but it is all that the shop had. I'm starting it off anyway in proper style with a description of Barbie's wedding. Yesterday, a quarter to two saw me waiting for a bus outside Simpson's in Piccadilly. I was looking very smart and clean with my hair newly set, my buttons shining and I was wearing my Moss Bros best blue. This part of London was sleek and prosperous with its offices and ‘not-having-to-think-about-having-to-take-a-taxi’ people. The sun was shining on its large solid buildings. In the church I sat by Beasle, a girl from Shell, and I was hardly seated when the congregation rose and in came the bride. I suppose all brides are beautiful but it was hard to believe that for the last two years I had worked and played and talked and eaten with so wonderful looking a person. I couldn't see them at the altar very well, nor hear David's replies, but Barbara's voice was steady and distinct. Then they went up to the altar and knelt down by it together. I saw them hold each other's hands and I said over and over and over in my head, don't kill David. There was a pause, silent and excited and expectant, when they came out of the vestry and then the organ burst out ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and they came past us, smiling and married. I was a bit wary about the reception. The one wedding I's been to before had a reception that I hated: I's not known anyone and I was lost and embarrassed and shy. I was grateful and glad therefore when all Barbara's relatives I had met at her twenty-first birthday party came and welcomed me with at least an externally perfect sincerity. After a series of champagnes I began to love everyone present. My shyness melted and giggles replaced it. Peter and another boy and girl and I grouped in a corner and collected all the available champagne and got to that lovely floating stage where everything was very very funny. Occasionally I detached myself and chatted animatedly to total strangers, but I always came back to Peter, the Cunninghams' very nice cousin, and Biddy and Patsy, Barbara's almost-as-nice-as-her sisters. After my fourth champagne there was one moment when I felt worried because things really were getting rather odd and words slipped about in my mouth. However, I rallied all my will-power and kept Biddy by me, who has a head like a rock even if only fifteen. She and Barbara are very alike, while Patsy and I are the silly ones. Then I formally adopted all the Cunninghams, arranged with them and Peter to go down for a weekend and was led by Biddy to my hat and gas mask. By great concentration I got to Mother's office to tell her that the bride carried a lovely wreath of spring flowers. (#litres_trial_promo) 1 April 1940 Coming back here in the Tube last night I thought, ‘This can't be real, I'm dreaming a nightmare, people can't be as ugly as that row opposite me.’ They had faces like drag-coloured plasticine pulled by grubby fingers into grotesque imitations of human faces. I could hardly bear looking at their ugliness. Then other people came in and made it more endurable: a young soldier with a face like a cheerful Walt Disney dwarf, a red-cheeked baby with a head circled with small ginger curls and a woman with a pale face, hollow cheeks and a long lovely mouth. On Saturday at home it was sunny and I walked over to Esher to change my library book. Weekends are almost the only time I get for reading now. In the weekdays I'm busy living. Books show you so much though. This weekend I had a good haul: A Life of Christ, Lewis Golding's The Jewish Problem and seven plays of 1939, including an excellent one by Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes, and Terence Rattigan's very thin and very empty After the Dance. Eric has a week's leave this week. I am seeing Walt Disney's Pinocchio and two plays with him. He suggested that we went to see Cousin Muriel: I don't think he likes serious plays very much but he thinks I do. 4 April 1940 Last night Eric and I went to see Cochran's (I thought disappointing) Lights Up. I'm beginning to be very fond of Eric. The trouble with youth is we are brought up to believe in and expect a Romeo and Juliet romance and that comes so rarely. If we were taught to expect nothing romantic from life, if we were only taught to see life intelligently, clear of literature's ideas of love, if we could only have adult contact with the other sex, we would be saved so much disillusion. If only we didn't want eternal love. My only hope is that by the time I get to be thirty I may have gotten rid of moonlight and roses and can enjoy living as a sophisticated, sane, unsentimental adult. We had a taxi from Queens Bar to the Savoy and put our feet up on the tip-up seats opposite. Mine wouldn't quite reach. He said, ‘Put yours on mine.’ ‘They'll make your trousers dusty.’ ‘It doesn't matter.’ He held both my hands. ‘Curse you.’ ‘Why?’ ‘For being you.’ ‘I can't help it.’ I was stirred and roused so much so that I was unsatisfied and restless for some time after. I wondered what kissing with him would be like. 6 April 1940 Yesterday was one of those unpremeditated evenings that turn out fun. Frances, Mickey and I arranged to go to the pictures and half past five saw Mickey and me ready to go, pacing the pavement impatiently outside the Sergeants Mess, within which sat Frances and company sergeants chatting socially with Our Annie. Beside us in the road was Old Mort (an elderly shapeless WAAF), sitting in the hearse, which is what we have named her utility van, a horrible monster of wood and glass. However, we were not too proud to climb into it and get a lift to Colindale Station once Frances had eventually broken loose. We found the Classic Cinema and for sixpence had the choice of any seat in the Stalls and two excellent films, one of which being The Wandering Jew. Frances and Mickey ate sherbets and chocolate cushions. I had tooth-ache and just sighed sadly when they passed the bag to each other over me. We approve very much of this cinema: as Mickey said, you even get to go to the lavatory free. That evening we fumbled through blackout and strange streets in search of a bus stop, then we smelt it – definitely, unmistakably – fried fish and chips! We went methodically down the street smelling each shop, sometimes the aroma was strong, sometimes faint, but the source always eluded us. Finally, defeated and sorrowful, we reached the bus stop. Just as the bus approached I glanced behind me one last time and there was what we wanted. I ripped the other two from the bus, we rushed inside, purchased chips and one piece of fish for Frances, and ate them while wandering lost round Hendon. When I got back, Beck and Bridget were in the kitchen. We talked about life and love and religion and men and survival of the individual until suddenly it was half past twelve. 10 April 1940 In the event of an air raid WAAF personnel rush to the new steel and reinforced concrete shelters, excepting the Decontamination Squad who huddle in one of the already shaken Booth Road houses. I have got myself onto the reserve of the Decontamination Squad, a first step to removing myself from it entirely. Three parts of this is ordinary cowardice, the other quarter is my rigid determination to survive and outlast this war. With the Scandinavian invasion, the war is jolted back on us, just as we had almost forgotten it. (#litres_trial_promo) We heard the wireless reports in the Recreation Room after lunch where we usually huddle over the fire, eating Milky Ways, smoking and reading the daily papers provided free for us by the RAF. I have had to surrender my little room at last. Last night while I was at French class (for the first time I found myself speaking it fluently without hesitation and effort), the others in the house moved my belongings downstairs into the big room with two disadvantages: no privacy and more cleaning. I think and hope they felt a little guilty about it because they lit my fire and made my bed and offered to help me clean up this morning. However, provided I can keep the room from a strange WAAF invasion and get myself some curtains, cushions and carpets, I can make it reasonably comfortable. 13 April 1940 In the morning of Thursday the officer I work for snatched my Daily Express from my hand and said, ‘Hoorah, hoorah! The war will be over in six months. The Germans have done the very worst thing now’ – and a lot more hoorahs. In my heart I don't myself believe it but I spent the morning saying ‘six months of war and three months of cleaning up and I'll be in Paris by next April’. In the afternoon we went to be inoculated and filed one by one into rugged grandeur's (the doctor's) office, to have our right arms pierced by the tetanus and our left by the anti-typhoid. I had no time to wait and think about it. Everyone else was genuinely indifferent. I didn't look at the needle. I was really quite brave – an improvement anyway on my screaming days at the dentist doorstep. ‘You'll feel awful in the evening,’ previously inoculated WAAFs told me, ‘freezing cold and nothing you can do will make you warmer.’ Accordingly, that evening I built up a colossal fire in my billet, piled blankets high on my bed with a further reserve on a chair, put on several jumpers and got to bed with a hot-water bottle, two aspirins, a box of cheeses, some broken chocolates, four buns and grapes from South Africa given to me by Bridget Prouse. I got extremely hot and soon went to sleep but the great frost came not at all. In the morning, noble to the last, I got up for breakfast. After breakfast I felt very odd and went back to bed. Finally I felt so foul I cast aside my book and unwisely toyed with the remains of last night's food. At lunchtime friends brought me a letter from Barbara. Cheered by that (she's asked me to Wales for my holidays), I tottered, pale and aching, to the Mess to work and on to a Chinese restaurant with Joyce, Mickey and Boompsie and finally feeling better to Bunty's where she and I laughed a lot about old days at school, while Mrs Goldie knitted (until she broke her needle and pulled it all undone) a year-old coat for a yet unborn baby. Eric listened and fed us with chocolates he's brought over with him for us. 16 April 1940 On Monday Boompsie and I, having no money (Boompsie is sharing my room as it is too large for one), lit the fire, turned on the wireless, got out books, mending etc. and looked sadly at two oranges, two pieces of chocolate cake and three tired tomato-flavoured cheeses. Suddenly there was a knock at the door which I, doing a French exercise and cursing, answered. And there stood Joyce with a car and ?1. I pulled on my coat over my tattered slacks (my decent pair have been being cleaned for the last three weeks and I am too poor to reclaim them), my blue shirt and my yellow jacket and we drove down to the local fish and chip shop before returning to the fireside with fish and chips and lemonade and ginger beer. Joyce stayed till 11.30 and we laughed practically continuously. Yesterday after meeting Mother I went on to my French class where Professor Bolitho told me of his love affairs, beginning at the age of eleven and apparently yet unended, with the seduction of a Girl Guide captain as the highlight. I enjoyed hearing it. I enjoyed discussing the varying moral outlooks of English and Europeans. I enjoyed his constant praise of me with remarks such as ‘J' aime les jeunes filles robustes fortes comme vous’. It did me good but after I left him my exit was shattered by the fact that I tripped and sprawled down the first flight of his stairs. Going from there, I hurried through the rain to Lyons Corner House to meet dear old Margot Ainscough from Shell, in the uniform of an ATS. (#litres_trial_promo) We went from there to the Regent Palace Bar where we discussed the varying lives of WAAF and ATS greatly to the Air Force's favour – so much so, in fact, that she's going to see if she can't get a transfer to the WAAF. Before I forget, snappy Service sayings: ‘Up with the lark and to bed with the Wrens’; RAF = ‘running after fluff’. 22 April 1940 Sitting in the adjutant's office and looking out of the window to where the sun was shining and aeroplanes landing on the green new grass I thought suddenly, my life is contented now: I have an interesting new job (I'm working for the new Station Intelligence Officer who's from Yorkshire and stocky and going bald, with a lot of humour and at the moment a bad cold. He treats you as if you had as much intelligence as himself); I have a reasonably nice young man, Eric, and enough variety to keep away boredom from my leisure hours. Never in my life have my days been so round and snug and this is a war, a clash of civilisation. It is odd. 25 April 1940 Last night the WAAFs gave a dance. I had my hair done the night before and it was looking extremely nice. Everyone had been remarking on it, the boys in the Orderly Room teasing me about it. Just before I left the house, Boompsie called from the bathroom to say the tap had burst again, but as Becket, the house NCO, said she would get a plumber, I thought no more about it. I danced with a lot of airmen, none very exciting, and at about 11.30 I met Boompsie and a drunk young Army officer: they said they were going on to a beer party when the dance ended and would I come. I said all right and we all of us went round looking for beer to buy and take away. Then one of the WAAF sergeants said she had heard about our planning and was coming along to our house to see we were in bed. I went to tell Geoffrey, the Army officer, this and explain it would be stupid to go. He said all right, come out with me tomorrow night, and kissed me in the hall in front of our senior sergeant; we were very drunk. He took my telephone number and said he's phone. Apparently he had made likewise promises to Boompsie and others (there's a dance up at his place and he was sent to collect a few WAAFs to go, preferably, I think, of the prostitute tendency). Back in my billet no plumber had come, the kitchen was flooded, Becket had missed the dance and spent the evening bailing water and was very very mad. Lots of men with mud-encrusted boots had worn paths across our bedroom. I got into bed with two aspirins, lied to the disappearing sergeant about Boompsie and was awakened by her at 3.30 returning from the Army officer and a battle for her maidenhead. I swore at her with a language I never realised I knew, and woke again at seven to see water over our floor, the pipes having burst in the night. Becket and I spent the morning cleaning it up, a filthy job, and by 11.30 when we were finally finished we lay like two limp dirty dolls on our respective beds. 28 April 1940 On Friday I went with Eric to see Gone With the Wind, having food first at the Queens Bar where we laughed and he teased and was rude to me: a far pleasanter state of affairs. The film was a good copy of the book: I know the book so well I could tell every line of every dialogue. The best parts were Scarlett returning to her ruined Tara against utmost odds – misery, poverty, starvation – and her rigid will to succeed, to rebuild. I lost interest in the beautiful silk-wrapped well-fed woman at the end of the film, beyond a sense of stupid waste as she progressed unhindered in her killing of Rhett's love. Coming out we had supper and going down to my train, Eric kissed me: he didn't interest me at all. 7 May 1940 I went reluctantly with three other WAAFs and a lot of airmen in a large coal lorry over to Uxbridge to go to the dentist. The Air Force is really wonderful: even dental treatment is given us free. It's a comforting feeling to be fed and clothed and kept healthy by an impersonal higher being – it leaves so little to worry about. No wonder the Services are happy go lucky. I have never been to such a good dentist who took endless trouble and never once hurt me. I had three injections for stopping the pain and have to go tomorrow to have one out. The journey back was fun: it was a hot day so we rolled up the battered tarpaulin and the wind caught in it like a sail almost lifting us from the road. The airmen laughed and talked and the van rattled us about and everyone in the street stopped to smile at us. In the evening I cut the grass and cleaned the window – it's house inspection tomorrow. 9 May 1940 I began to be afraid in the morning. I began to think he couldn't possibly take out a whole hard tooth without hurting me. By lunchtime, as I walked down to the waiting dentist lorry, past a lorry full of cheering WAAFs going to play hockey, I felt very self-sorry. This time I rode with Pat Rollandson in front with the driver. In the waiting room I found an article on ‘Why Be Afraid’ and drained it of its inadequate comfort. An orderly called, ‘ACW Bawden’ and I walked to the chair. He stuck needles in my tooth and said, indifferently of course, that it wouldn't hurt me. I was glad he wasn't sympathetic: I was horribly unreasonably afraid. The agony was wondering when it would hurt. I said, ‘I will be brave, I do so want to be brave,’ and one tear fell out of the side of my eye but nobody took any notice of it. Suddenly two hands came out behind my head and held it fast, I screwed up my eyes, his pincers were on my tooth and he was right! It didn't hurt. My faith in him returned, I wondered with interest how long it would take to come out. He had to get another pair of pincers and pulled and pulled, and the orderly gripped my head and at last, without a twinge, I felt it slipping out. He made me put my head between my knees to fill the cavity with blood. I have to go back next week but I don't mind. Next time I'll be really properly brave. That evening Boompsie and I went to Golders Green to see Ivor Novello's empty, faintly amusing Full House. I am writing this later, bored and on guardroom duty. Hearty Annie has just come in to say goodbye to us, I wonder what officer horror they've found for us next. It's even later now and I'm back in my billet from the Sergeants Mess. They's had a party and had a lot of food left over, so Priscilla Carpenter and I were asked in to eat it up (my appetite is famous) and it was heavenly – gherkins and cheese and crisps and prawns and olives and beer, yummy yum. 11 May 1940 These last two days! Boompsie's wake-up call: ‘Joan!’, and Broadcast Control's: ‘Collect no. 5 equipment’, (#litres_trial_promo) Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/joan-rice/sand-in-my-shoes-coming-of-age-in-the-second-world-war-a-waaf-s/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.