Forgotten Voices of the Blitz and the Battle For Britain by Joshua Levine

Author:Joshua Levine
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409034087
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Pilot Officer Richard Leoline Jones in the cockpit of his Spitfire at Fowlmere.

Flight Lieutenant Gerald Edge

605 and 253 Squadrons, RAF

When we moved to Turnhill, we weren’t welcomed at all because the Polish squadron that had been there before had been a proper pest. The Commanding Officer and another officer had been found breaking in to the WAAFs’ officer quarters. When we arrived there, they were both in cells.

Marian Orley

Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

When we had new postings of Poles on the station, I used to tell the WAAFs that there was only one Polish word that they needed to know: ‘Nie’. And not once did I have a pregnancy on that station.

Alison Hancock

Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

Most of the WAAFs were interested in the opposite sex – which was only natural. You had to try and keep your end up a bit.

Victor Hester

25 and 532 Squadrons, RAF

The Squadron Commander asked me if I had a car. I said yes. He gave me a local purchase order and asked me to go the chemist in the High Street and buy 400 French letters. It was ridiculous. I think I’d kissed a girl by then but that was about the limit and the idea of walking into a chemist shop and buying French letters was beyond me. I’d much rather have gone up and faced some Germans. I went into the shop and lots of pretty young ladies came up – the air force was quite popular at the time. I asked for the manager and I whispered to him, ‘French letters.’ ‘Yes, I understand,’ he said, ‘how many?’ ‘400,’ I said. That knocked him sideways. ‘I’ll have to go and see if I’ve got 400,’ he said. He obviously told the girls what it was all about because they all came back full of smiles to see this man who could use 400 French letters. To the unenlightened – we used to put them over the ends of guns to keep the rain out.

Alison Hancock

Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

At one station, a couple of WAAFs got pregnant and they both came in to me to say goodbye and one was quite a tough girl and the other one was a sweet girl. Blow me if the tough one didn’t point at the sweet one and say, ‘It wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for her …’

Marian Orley

Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

I had a WAAF corporal who volunteered all the time to go on the ration lorry that bumped up and down everywhere. I couldn’t understand why until one day, in the middle of PT, she gave birth. She was a very fat girl – we’d never have known.

Flying Officer Basil Stapleton

South African Pilot, 603 Squadron, RAF

We weren’t thinking about wives and kids. We had no responsibility other than being in the air force. We had no distraction apart from the ones we made ourselves.

Flying Officer Harold Bird-Wilson

17 Squadron, RAF

After one patrol, the wives of the missing men came daily to the officers’ mess and hung around waiting for information as to the return of their husbands.

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