Arts to Intelligence. Doreen Galvin

The floor beneath our feet, ignored by the carpenters, was a mass of muddy earth, made usable only by a series of duck boards placed over it. I doubt if any of us washed behind our ears or aspired to the excessive use of soap for the next three weeks. In low spirits, we returned to the hut, made our beds and crawled under the damp blankets, shivering. Was it really the same day that I had left Hastings? It seemed that I had left the comforts of home weeks ago.

      The following morning, Service life began in earnest at the Equipment Section. There we were issued with uniforms and ugly, but warm, underwear that went with them. The strong black leather lace-up shoes were our most difficult problem, for they were the cause of many blisters during the first week.

      On the second night, the girl who occupied a bed next to me broke camp. She had a great night with the boys, having left and returned unchallenged by going through a gap in the fence. She was too drunk to get into bed and so spent what was left of the night under it. Early the next morning while she was still sleeping it off, another girl from our party announced that she'd "had" the Air Force and was running away! We had already been informed that, as volunteers, we were allowed to change our minds about staying on but, after three days, it would be considered desertion, and this was the third day. She did not trust the authorities to discharge her legally, so she decided to make a quick getaway at dawn. I often wonder what happened to her!

      The following twenty-one days were filled with drill on the parade ground, instructed by a sergeant who barked at us constantly. When not on the parade ground, we were sent on route marches, which grew longer and longer as the sticking plaster on our feet grew thicker and thicker. Before our first week’s pay was due, we learned how to stand in line, step briskly in front of the accounts clerk, salute according to the book, shout our number - 442513 in my case - then pretend to take our weekly pittance from his hand. We usually finished doubled up with laughter. The sergeant tolerated this only on the first day. At the end of the week when I received my first ten-shilling note, I tried to keep my giggles well under control; otherwise I would have been kept waiting until the end of the pay parade to do my circus act all over again.

      After the three-week initiation period, our group was split up and we were dispersed all over the country. I joined a party of about eighteen girls, all of whom had been chosen for "special duties," whatever they were. We set off in a hopeful mood, knowing that our future life could not be much more strenuous or painful than square-bashing and limping on blistered feet. I looked back on the past three weeks as an interesting experience, having shared and learned something about the lives of people whom I would otherwise never have met or known. They were a good hearted group.

      We travelled to Leighton Buzzard, about thirty or forty miles north of London. By now, we appeared to be a somewhat more cohesive group, as we all wore the same Air Force blue uniform. Dusk had fallen when we alighted from the train where the inevitable lorry - as trucks were called in England - was waiting for us. As we drove through a rather uninteresting part of town, we approached our goal, a most depressing-looking building constructed of very grubby brick. Its original colour was obliterated by years of dust and dirt, and its only architectural features were two rows of small windows one above the other. These were covered with sticky tape to prevent the glass from flying during an air raid. An unprepossessing archway in the centre invited us rather grudgingly into the equally ugly quadrangle. Our sleeping quarters were on the upper floor, with an open corridor (or balcony) connecting the rooms. These were dark and the paint on the walls was brown with age. There was a small bare gas jet projecting from the wall in each room for illumination, enough to see by, but not nearly good enough for studying if we had to read at night. We were told, "Oh, yes! This place used to be a workhouse, and most of the gas power is now used to supply the factory down the road." We had six weeks to survive in this dismal industrial district!

      Next morning, the same lorry driver took us a short distance, and then halted at the entrance gate to a heavily camouflaged area. Two armed guards then let the vehicle through and we dismounted outside an even more heavily camouflaged one-storey building. A couple of MPs escorted us inside and we found ourselves in another world. It was a very large room with a huge table in the centre covered with a grid map of the southern half of England. The room was a perfect replica of a Fighter Operations Room.

      For several weeks, without a day off, as far as I can remember, despite the fact that the Easter week intervened, we pushed arrows around on the map as we plotted fictitious raids and air battles, until we reacted automatically to the instructions received through our earphones from the R.D.F. (Radar) lines and Observer Corps.