The Girls Who Went to War: Heroism, heartache and happiness in the wartime women’s forces
left school at 15, Peggy had already moved out to train as a nurse. But when she urged her little sister to follow suit, their mother was horrified, and soon Margery had been dissuaded. Instead, she took evening classes in accountancy and found herself a job close by, in the back office of the local baker’s.
At Pyle & Son Margery spent her days perched at a high desk, scribbling away in the accounts ledger. She was ruled over by the head clerk, a woman named Miss Pratt, who was always on the lookout for ink blotches. Miss Pratt quickly discovered Margery’s pliant nature and began adding to her list of official duties. Soon the poor girl was required to clean the offices each morning, light the fires, type up the menus for the bakery’s cafe and even wait tables, in addition to the bookkeeping she had been hired for.
One day, when Peggy popped in to see Margery, she was furious to find her stacking up goods for the delivery round. ‘My sister is a ledger clerk,’ she fumed. ‘She shouldn’t be packing buns!’ But her outburst made no difference in the long run. When one of the horses escaped from its cart on the way back from the delivery round, it was Margery who was sent to catch it, and then to the chemist to fetch the ointment she was expected to rub into the animal’s sore knees.
The unsatisfactory situation reached a new low one day, when Miss Pratt flew into a rage and called Margery a nincompoop for failing to fetch the dog’s dinner. Margery wasn’t normally one to stand up to authority, but even she could see it was time to leave.
She got as far as the shop next door – a musty old draper’s called Dodge’s, where she took a job as a cashier instead.
As Margery made her small stand against the tyrannical regime of Miss Pratt, the world was facing up to tyranny of a different kind. The first notable impact of the war on the quiet life of North Wallington was the sudden appearance of hundreds of sailors, when a naval training college, HMS Collingwood, opened up in nearby Fareham.
Soon, there were more reminders of the drama unfolding beyond the village. In the evenings, the sky was all too often lit up by an eerie glow, as German bombers pounded Portsmouth and Gosport. One night, the operating theatre at Peggy’s hospital was hit, and the doctors and nurses had to form a line, passing buckets of water along in a desperate attempt to put out the fires.
A brand new air-raid shelter had been built just across the road from the maltster’s house, but Mr Pott’s health just wasn’t up to the cold, wet conditions there, so when the sirens sounded the whole family remained at home, hoping for the best. Margery was secretly glad – she was more frightened of going out in the dark than she was of the bombs, and the thought of being trapped in a crowded public shelter made her shudder.
The war brought with it new job prospects as well, and soon Margery’s friend Daisy had begun working at a munitions factory in Gosport, filling shell cases. But the idea of factory work filled Margery with dread. She’d had a horror of machines since her childhood, when she and Peggy had ridden the Gosport ferry and been taken below deck to view the engine room. Margery’s sister had been thrilled at the sight of the enormous machines, but she had found the whole experience terrifying.
Daisy seemed pleased with her new factory job and the relatively high wages it offered. But, after a few weeks, Margery noticed that her friend’s blonde ringlets had acquired a strange ginger tinge, and soon her usually pretty face had turned yellow. A few days later she heard from Daisy’s mother that she had been off work sick, and when she went to visit she was shocked by the change in her. Daisy’s entire body had gone a deep shade of orange, and now even the whites of her eyes were coloured with it. ‘We reckon it’s the TNT from the factory,’ her mother told Margery, wringing her apron at Daisy’s bedside.
Over the coming weeks Daisy slowly clawed her way back to health, but her illness only made Margery more terrified than ever at the thought of working in a factory. Yet to her dismay there was talk of young women being conscripted – not only into the armed forces but into munitions factories like the one in Gosport as well. In April 1941 the Registration for Employment Order was passed, requiring Margery, like all other young, single women, to register with the Ministry of Labour. Since she was now 20, she was in the catchment age for the impending call-up.
Margery was frantic. Throughout her young life, joining the military could not have been further from her mind – yet if she didn’t volunteer now, the choice of whether to join the services or be put into a factory would be taken out of her hands. There was nothing for it: she would have to enlist.
She was relieved to discover that she was not alone – another girl at the draper’s called Winnie was facing the same dilemma. But which force should they choose – Army, Navy or Air Force?
‘The WAAF uniform’s a nice colour,’ remarked one of their colleagues over lunch one day, pointing to a recruitment ad in the magazine she was reading. The illustration showed Air Force girls in smart blue uniforms, dancing with dashing pilots. Before long, Winnie and Margery had hatched a plan to get the bus to Portsmouth together that weekend and volunteer for the WAAF.
At the recruiting office Margery’s brief interview seemed to go well, and a WAAF sergeant said they would be pleased to take her, thanks to her experience in accounts. ‘You’ll be hearing from us soon,’ she assured her.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before both Margery and Winnie awoke to find a brown envelope on their doormat. Inside was a letter ordering the girls to report to Portsmouth the next day at 7 a.m. From there, they would be taken to London for a medical exam.
Now Margery was gripped by a new fear – what if she failed the medical? She remembered with a jolt a broken tooth that she had been meaning to get fixed. Could that be enough to keep her out of the WAAF? She wasn’t sure, but she had no intention of taking the risk. Something had to be done – and quickly.
Before long, Margery was sat in front of the local dentist, begging him to remove the offending tooth. The man was a little put out at being asked to perform such a last-minute operation, but he yanked and pulled with his pliers until finally it was extracted.
That night, as she tried to pack her tiny overnight bag while cradling her painful jaw, Margery received some unsettling news. Winnie’s aunt had died unexpectedly, and since she was already motherless and the only girl in the family, her father had decided that he needed her at home to run the house. Winnie wouldn’t be coming with her to London after all – instead Margery would be facing the Air Force alone.
It was a little after 5 a.m. the following morning when Margery caught the bus to Portsmouth. She was wearing her best suit – a pale blue jacket with matching skirt and blouse, which she hoped would make a good impression on the WAAF. As the vehicle trundled along the sleepy country lanes, she wondered where she might ultimately end up. She had never been away from home before – or really, gone anywhere at all, other than a few trips to Dover and Deal to see her relatives. Yet in the Air Force she would have no say in where she was stationed, and she might be sent far, far away from the familiar world of North Wallington.
On the train from Portsmouth to London, Margery sat with a small group of equally nervous-looking local girls, some a little older than herself and some younger. As they rushed towards the capital, a WAAF sergeant told the girls that if they passed the day’s medical exam they would be sent for three weeks’ basic training in Gloucester, but if they failed they would be going straight home again. Margery was wracked with nerves at the thought of flunking the medical, and more thankful than ever that she had got rid of her broken tooth.
At the imposing Victory House in Piccadilly, Margery’s cohort was swept into a sea of new recruits being processed that day. The building was a hive of activity, with line after line of women queueing to see various doctors, each of whom specialised in a different part of the human anatomy. First Margery joined a queue of girls waiting to have their hearts and lungs tested – as they reached the front, they were asked to breathe in and out while a man with glasses listened intently for any rattles or murmurs. Margery was worried that her racing heart would let her down, but to her relief she passed and was moved on to the next line. There, she queued for more than an hour before her limbs were stretched and examined and her knees and elbows knocked with a little hammer to test her reflexes. Then there