The Road to Station X: From Debutante Ball to Fighter-Plane Factory to Bletchley Park, a Memoir of One Woman's Journey Through World War Two (Memoirs from World War Two) by Sarah Baring

Author:Sarah Baring [Baring, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2020-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

MISCHIEF AND HIGH JINKS

We thought a lot about food. There is a saying that an army marches on its stomach and most of us were convinced we belonged to that order of things. Night watches were especially vulnerable to rumbling tummies and usually forced us to go down to the canteen at about three a.m. where the food was indescribably awful. It is a well-known fact that to cater for so many people is difficult and particularly in wartime; however, given the raw ingredients palatability need not be ignored, but our canteen outshone any sleazy restaurant in producing sludge and the smell of watery cabbage and stale fat regularly afflicted the nostrils to the point of nausea.

One night I found a cooked cockroach nestling in my meat, if you can dignify it by that name, the meat not the beetle. I was about to return the offending object to the catering manageress, when Osla, who had the appetite of a lioness with cubs, snatched the plate and said, “What a waste, I’ll eat round it.” How she managed to eat so much minus the insect and stay so slim I never knew, because any leftovers on any nearby plate were gobbled up by her in a flash.

There were a few naval officers in our section, too few for my liking. Curiously enough Admiralty was considered a civilian organisation and as civilians we were paid by the Foreign Office, even though we worked for the navy. I dreamed about being taken out by one of this rare uniformed breed and this wish occasionally came true. The Mecca establishment for an outing was a pub in Stony Stratford a few miles down the road. It did involve, however, doing a Cinderella act at midnight in time to catch the twelve o’clock transport back to my billet. Romance never blossomed alas, except almost once; he was a tall, dark, handsome sailor with beguiling grey eyes and a scholar of some repute.

I had become something of an intellectual snob by then, aroused by the eclectic conversations of my peers. The combination of good looks and brains in this Adonis was perfect and I lived in a haze of romantic idealism. He wrote me affectionate poems in Russian and always used the diminutive of my name, it was the epitome of enchantment and I waited for his letters via the internal postal system with undisguised impatient indulgence. Unhappily, I don’t think he really fancied me. It was just the idea of being in love; nevertheless I shall always remember him as one who brought exceptional talents and gifts into my life.

Amongst my many friends in this unique world was a larger-than-life girl called Jean, she later became Baroness Trumpington and a great Parliamentarian. We all loved her. She never appeared without a smile on her face; you couldn’t rub it off, however bad the news was. She had an incredible sense of fun, and this quality, which we all enjoyed, did much to discomfort our immediate boss, newly arrived at Station X.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.