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

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?