Chapter 17
The following weeks passed in a blur of drills, lectures, kit inspections, gas-mask practices and a hundred and one other activities which were all part and parcel of WAAF life, but overall Amy’s abiding memory of this time was sore feet.That and a strong sense of togetherness and friendship. When she would have stayed alone in the hut in her free time rather than mixing with the airmen, Gertie and the others wouldn’t let her. And through their persistence she learned that many of the RAF boys had only recently left the protective shelter of home for the first time, and despite brave phrases and RAF jargon were very unsure of themselves. In fact most of them were little more than babies, she felt, and when she responded to the inevitable passes, ribaldry and invitations with a kind but firm smile and definite no, they appeared almost relieved to be let off the hook of swashbuckling bravado. The trouble was, more than one informed her gravely, they were associated with a force that had a reputation for danger, heroism and romance, and they felt they had to live up to it. But if she just wanted to be friends . . . She did, she’d inform each one gently, and then sit listening patiently as they relived the day’s flying minute by minute.
She learned that flying was their first love however much they might like the opposite sex, and that they were where they were not because they were burning to go to war but burning to fly. But to a man they were ready to sacrifice their lives if it came to it.They both humbled her and restored her faith in the male of the species.
And then suddenly the women’s passing-out parade was over and to hut twenty-three’s pride not one of their number had given up and gone home. Now came the time they had all joined up for - their first posting to a real RAF camp. Gertie would have been bereft at the thought of being torn from the company of her new friends, but in the event both she and Amy were detailed to a station in Norwich; the rest of the girls were scattered at different camps all over the south of England.
‘You’ll keep in touch, won’t you, lass?’ Nell was busy stuffing her clothes and belongings into the brand new kitbag they had all been issued with, a tall, white, heavy tube of a thing which required its owner to be possessed of muscles like a wrestler’s to have any chance of carrying it when it was full.
‘Of course I will.’ Amy shoved her tin hat into the top of her own bag and pulled the rope to secure it. Pamela had already exchanged addresses, as had all the girls, but they had all privately agreed that if, in the sweepstake of postings, it was possible for any two of them to stay together, it was better one of the duo was Gertie.
Amy glanced at her young friend. Because she had been terrified she wouldn’t be ready in time for the lorries which were giving the fledgling WAAFs a lift to the train station, Gertie had been up at the crack of dawn packing. She was standing by her bed now, one hand on her kitbag which was lying on top of the covers and her gas mask slung over one shoulder. She had admitted to them all one night that she was only just seventeen, having added more than a year to her age when she volunteered. She said she had joined up because some of her friends had. Amy didn’t quite believe this. Although she had nothing concrete to go on she felt Gertie had enlisted to escape some domestic problem at home, but her friend clearly didn’t want to talk about it.
Gertie caught her eye and smiled wanly. ‘I managed to get everything in,’ she said, ‘but my jacket is going to be ever so creased.’
‘So’s mine but we’ll iron them when we get to Norwich.’ Gertie hadn’t had a clue about how to iron her uniform when she had first arrived, but everyone had taken her under their wing and now she was as capable as the rest of them, if still without a shred of confidence. ‘Right.’ Amy took hold of the rope at the top of her kitbag, slung her gas mask over her shoulder and attempted to swing the bag onto the other shoulder. It landed on the floor with a dull thud just as the sound of impatient hooting outside told them they were keeping their lifts waiting. Everyone else had problems carrying their kitbags too, even Nell who was sturdily built and was fond of telling them all she was as strong as her brothers any day. Those of them who were light and slender, like Amy and Gertie and Pamela, didn’t have a hope in heaven of ever lifting the things onto their backs.
The occupants of hut twenty-three made a somewhat ignominious exit some minutes later, huffing and puffing and dragging their kitbags behind them. It didn’t help morale when the RAF drivers threw the bags up into the back of the lorries as though they contained feathers.
Amy glanced round at the others in the lorry. They were all singing ‘Hang out your washing on the Siegfried Line’ with gusto. She could hardly believe she’d only known her friends for such a short while. It was strange because she’d seen plenty of goings-on in the café over the last years, they’d had all sorts to contend with at times, but Nell and the rest of them had awakened something in her which had lain dormant since she had left Sunderland. It would sound overly dramatic if voiced, but she felt as though they had brought her back to life, and the trainee pilots had played a part in this too.
When they all piled out of the lorry at the station, Amy found herself feeling as stricken as Gertie looked at the thought of saying goodbye to everyone. It helped a little that the others seemed to feel the same and there was a lot of sniffing and snuffling.
By the time the train steamed into Norwich station, Amy’s equilibrium had reasserted itself. Not least because she felt a responsibility to chivvy Gertie along. They stood straightening their ties and smoothing their skirts, kitbags at their feet, as the train chugged off. A vicious icy wind made them hastily button their service greatcoats.
‘I take it you’re the two for the camp?’ A young pilot officer had come up behind them and as they both swung round and saluted, Gertie stepped on Amy’s toes which were still sore from two weeks of marching in new shoes. ‘I had to come into town so I said I’d pick you up. Come on.’ He whisked up their kitbags and led them out to a van, whistling cheerfully as he went.
The officer drove quickly and surely, keeping his eyes on the road as he filled them in about their new posting. Rows and rows of neat wooden huts seemed to stretch endlessly in front of their eyes as he drew to a halt. The airfield itself was someway from the rest of the camp to limit casualties in case of attack. As in most camps, the airwomen’s accommodation, complete with its guardroom, was separated from the rest of the station and out of bounds to airmen.
After depositing them outside the WAAF CO’s office, the pilot heaved the two kitbags out of the back of the van, wished them well, jumped back into the vehicle and disappeared off into the maze.
They stood there gazing after him like two little orphan Annies. ‘No Nissen huts.’ Amy’s voice was bracing. ‘Nell’s sister said the wooden or concrete huts are miles better so we might not wake up with icicles on our noses here.’
Gertie nodded. The size of the camp overwhelmed her.
‘Let’s report in then.’ Amy grasped her kitbag and hauled it to the door of the wooden building. This was it. She was about to be slotted into the great machine that made up the Royal Air Force’s fight against the enemy and she just hoped she proved herself worthy when the chips were down.
By lights out that night Amy felt as though she had been in the camp days instead of hours. This was mainly due to the warm welcome she and Gertie had received from their fellow WAAFs. After the long rigmarole of initial camp procedure, they’d been shown to their sleeping quarters by a friendly administrative officer who had taken pity on their evident bewilderment. The officer had opened the hut door to find a number of girls cavorting about the room and jumping on the beds, shrieking like banshees.
On realising there was an officer present, everyone had stopped dead before hurrying to stand by their beds, one girl clutching what looked like a telegram in her hand and tears streaming down her face.
The officer had raised enquiring eyebrows at the girl, whose name was Isobel Turner, and she’d responded by gabbling, ‘It’s Philip, ma’am, my fiancé. He’s wounded but safe. The
Resistance got him out.’
The officer smiled widely. ‘I told you not to give up hope, now didn’t I? Well,’ her glance scanned the rest of the girls, ‘you’d better all carry on, hadn’t you?’ And with that she turned and left, closing the door behind her.
It turned out that Isobel’s fiancé had been shot down over France some weeks before and they had been due to get married a few days ago. ‘But that doesn’t matter, nothing matters now I know he’s all right,’ Isobel beamed.
‘I’m so glad for you.’ Amy smiled at the tall lanky redhead and Isobel smiled back, and in that moment Amy knew she had found another friend. In fact she’d found a hut full, she reflected, glancing at the miniature portrait of her mother which she’d had copied from the original which was still in her bedroom at Winnie’s. She turned off her torch and settled down for sleep in the darkness. After a while she was annoyed to find she was still awake; she just couldn’t relax her mind, even knowing breakfast parade was at seven forty-five in the morning.
Their hut was much larger than the one at training camp; it held a total of twenty-four beds with a separate room tacked on the end for the NCO. Unfortunately the ablution huts were, once again, far away. Amy had been informed that the RAF chiefs deemed it unhealthy for them to be close to the WAAF sleeping quarters.
‘The men’s ones are much nearer them of course,’ one of the girls had put in with mild resentment. ‘But then that comes with us having to be in at eleven at night whereas they can stay out till twelve and us getting two-thirds of their pay and so on. I mean, they don’t have our expenses, do they? It ought to be the other way round, if anything. We have to buy face powder and lipstick and cream and hair rollers—’
Someone had thrown a pillow at her at this point and she’d retired gracefully. Amy smiled at the memory but then her expression straightened at the thought of the next day. Possibly because she had mentioned running the café with Winnie on her application form, she had been told she would be assigned to the kitchens, her trade officially recorded as cook. She hadn’t liked to point out that preparing and cooking meals for a small café wasn’t quite the same as supplying the needs of hundreds of hungry airmen and airwomen. Gertie had been equally disconcerted to find she had been detailed as an equipment assistant. There was another girl in the hut working in equipment and she had scared Gertie to death when she’d told her she’d be working in huge premises, crowded with tall racks which were filled with a vast variety of goods, each with its own name and number which had to be recorded and recognised.
But they would both be fine,Amy reassured herself, bringing the blankets up round her ears and relishing the fact that this hut was a hundred times warmer than the ice-cold Nissen. There were lots of WAAFs around to help; the comradeship she’d already experienced in the few hours she had been here told her they wouldn’t be left to struggle as newcomers. She hoped Nell and Pamela and the rest of hut twenty-three had been equally well received wherever they had finished up.
She would write to Nell and Pamela, she told herself drowsily as the emotion and physical exertion of the day kicked in and she felt her eyelids grow heavy. And perhaps Kitty too. Nell’s broad northern dialect had made her think of Kitty more than once and she had to face the fact she should have let Kitty know where she was long before now. Charles was a different story.
She felt a spasm of the old turmoil and pain and turned over, burying her face in the pillow. She wouldn’t think of Charles now but even that would have to be dealt with at some point. He wasn’t a practising Catholic and she hadn’t been in a church since she’d left the north-east, not a Catholic one anyway. She had slipped into a little Baptist church close to the café a few times and, in spite of the niggling feeling that she had committed a sin through attending a service in a non-Catholic church, she’d found peace there. She was able to pray again, but this time without the trappings of the religion she had been brought up in.
Would Charles agree to a divorce without any quibbling, or would he dig his heels in and make things difficult? She really had no idea how he’d react. But if she had to take Charles on and fight for her freedom, she would. She owed it to her baby.
The thought eased the agitation at what was to Amy a huge milestone for her future. She let her limbs and mind relax and in a few minutes she was asleep.
‘Do you think you need to leave camp for training, Shawe?’
Amy stared back into the eyes of the tall plain woman in front of her. She knew what the corporal wanted her to say. As Amy had arrived at the camp, one of the WAAF cooks hadn’t come back from a week’s leave, having been severely injured when a bomb had fallen on her family’s home, and the remaining cooks and kitchen orderlies were much overworked.
‘I think I’ll be all right, Corporal,’ she said. She wasn’t at all sure she’d be all right but the rest of the team had promised to teach her all the ins and outs of cooking for the camp dining rooms - one for the airmen and one for the airwomen - and the joint NAAFI where everyone congregated in the evenings.Amy had already heard stories of the all-ranks dances that were held regularly - admission sixpence, spirits a shilling and beer about fourpence - where the team would provide snacks and on special occasions a big buffet.
‘Unfortunately it means a couple of us are serving,’ Cassie, another WAAF, had explained. ‘But we take it in turns to have a night off. And our station band is terrific, good as Roy Fox or Billy Cotton any day.’
The corporal now smiled approvingly at Amy; she had obviously given the right answer. ‘That’s the ticket,’ she said. ‘Get stuck in and learn on the job, that’s better than any training school, in my opinion.’
‘Course she hasn’t dished up burned sausages and onions in the airmen’s mess,’ whispered Cassie as the corporal walked away. Cassie had been regaling Amy with some of her own blunders when she’d first come to the camp six months before. Amy wasn’t sure if it was to encourage her or frighten her rigid. ‘They all stood on the chairs banging their plates with their knives and singing “To Err is human, to forgive, divine”.’
Amy giggled. She liked Cassie.
True to their word, the team of RAF and WAAF cooks and kitchen orderlies were patient, kind and reassuring over the next few days as Amy learned the ropes.The team worked well together, with plenty of good-natured ribaldry and flirting going on, but Cassie explained to Amy that it was an unwritten rule you didn’t date someone you worked with closely. ‘Too complicated.’ She wrinkled her little button nose set in a pretty face under a mass of brown curly hair. ‘And with all those lovely pilots to choose from, who’d pick a cook anyway?’
And then came the day when Amy was designated to be one of the cooks who stood and dished up the food in the airmen’s mess out of the huge metal bowls that looked like pig’s troughs. She had served in the WAAF’s dining room before but not the RAF one which was three times as big, and she was nervous. Silly, she told herself, considering she had been married and lived with a man for two years, but she felt all fingers and thumbs.
Wrapped up in her white overall and with her hair tucked inside the white cap which resembled an inflated pancake, she manned an enormous tub of mashed potato and onion, but the unflattering garb merely drew attention to her beauty rather than hiding it. Amy was quite unaware of this and she kept her head down as much as she could, ladling out dollops of thick sticky potato on the plates thrust in front of her without raising her eyes. Until, that was, a voice said, ‘Amy? Is it you?’
Other voices had spoken before this one and they had been kind, friendly; passing the time of day while letting her know they liked what they saw, but only once or twice had she glanced up and then just to smile. Now as her eyes met those of the tall man staring at her as though transfixed, she said, ‘Bruce?’
‘It is you.’ He slung his plate on the counter and reached out to take her hands, careless of the interested onlookers. ‘I’ve been on leave but I’d heard there was a right cracker -’ he stopped abruptly before continui
ng almost without a pause, ‘a new WAAF in the kitchens. But for it to be you . . .’
‘You . . . you’re in the RAF?’ It was a silly question in the circumstances.
He nodded and he didn’t let go of her hands. ‘Wireless mechanic,’ he said briefly.
‘I hate to interrupt such a touching reunion but he clearly isn’t going to introduce me.’
Bruce was elbowed aside none too gently by the man who had been standing behind him. Bruce didn’t seem put out, though; in fact he was smiling when he said, ‘Amy, meet Pilot Officer Johnson.’
‘Hey, any friend of yours is a friend of mine so cut the formality.’
Amy took her gaze from Bruce and turned to the other man, a polite smile forming on her lips. She felt something akin to an electric shock as she found her eyes held by ones of deepest green.
‘The name’s Nick.’Very white, even teeth flashed in a face that was tanned to a golden brown. ‘And I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Amy . . . ?’
‘Shawe.’ It took some effort to tear her gaze away. ‘Amy Shawe.’
‘Shawe? Don’t tell me you two are related?’
The Rainbow Years Page 26