Mum and Dad

Mum was in the laboratory at Crystal Palace working, with others, of course, on television.

The laboratory work was paid less than the factory labour so there was always a bit of dissension at home about where she should be. Mum preferred being where she was in spite of the lower pay.

The time came when, shortly after the war started, Mum mentioned in a conversation with a couple of the other girls that perhaps German mothers might worry about their sons, too.

She was hauled into the office and accused of having ‘German sympathies’ and let go from her job.

Sad.

So she joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a WRAF (Women’s Royal Air Force person).

Because of her civilian work they decided that she should be an electrician.

Mum panicked.

“I knew nothing of electricity. Nothing. They sent me on a course and one of the other girls helped me out because I was so useless at this,” she told us.

In due course she managed to pass and became a ‘Lekky’.

On one occasion she was heading back to the hangar with a generator from the repair bay when she dropped it. She looked around, couldn’t see anybody and was now in two minds whether to proceed. She decided, at last, to return to the repair bay and tell them what had happened. A short while later a Warrant Officer called her to his office and told her that he had seen her drop the generator, through his window, and was curious as to what she would do.

“Good for you,” he told her, “If you had carried on to the hangar I should have called your Chief and you would now be in deep trouble. You never know who is watching you—or where they are watching from.”

The females’ toilets were dark due to lack of a light bulb. Mum decided to ‘borrow’ one. She crept over to the men’s barracks, reached through their toilet window and stole theirs.

To cries of, “Oy! Bring that back!” and sundry other, less printable phrases, she returned, victorious, to the girls’ barracks and installed her prize.

Less savoury was the occasion when the Officers, returning from a drunken spree, tossed a rotten, dead, cat through the women’s barracks window. It landed on a girl in her bed; she screamed long and loud. The medics took her away, she was never seen again. Naturally the Officers were never found. It would, in any case, have been ‘high spirits’ or, if it had been enlisted men, ‘vandalism’.

One night she was going to the hangar on her bicycle. On her way around the peri-track she saw an officer coming the other way. There were Lancaster bombers taxying out. She tried to shout a warning but the noise of four Rolls-Royce Merlins drowned her out. The officer was busy waving to his friends when the outboard propeller hit him. Mum told us that his whole head just vanished.

Mum had a round scar on the inside of her elbow. When, as a small boy, I asked her about it she said that she was doing some soldering on an urgent job. The aircraft was due out on an operation in a short while. The solder dripped down from the job...

Dad was a Rigger (Airframe Mechanic). He was working on the bomb bay of a Lancaster of ‘9 Squadron’ (This was the ‘Green Bat’ Squadron whose motto is ‘Per Noctem Volamus’ – 'We Fly By Night'. They fly Tornadoes now, I’m told).

In the flight deck was Mum. She had carried out some work on the electrically actuated undercarriage and needed to test them. She assumed (ergh!) that the aircraft was still jacked up so she selected ‘Undercarriage Up’.

The aircraft gradually settled down on to the bomb doors where Dad was working

She said that this fellow appeared in the flight deck and turned the air blue. Someone had thrown a chock under the aircraft and that had saved Dad from getting crushed. He was, she said, not happy.

For some reason, Mum had her wisdom teeth out. This was followed by an infection that prevented her from opening her mouth. An inspiring thought for women was what crossed my mind but I shan’t mention that here.

Dad discovered that she was in considerable discomfort and couldn’t eat. He cycled all the way to the Mess and brought back soup and bread. He dipped the bread in the soup to let her suck the soup out so she could have something to eat.

Mum fell in love with Dad at that point.

Shortly after that she was put on a charge. She had parked her bicycle in the bicycle racks, which were concrete blocks with a curved slot in them to put the wheel of the bike into. Sadly, in her rush, she had put the front wheel in the slot instead of the back wheel thus giving rise to the possibility that the bicycle would be damaged.

Thereafter, even until shortly before she passed away some sixty years later, she would trill a little ditty about putting her ‘front wheel where her back wheel ought to be’!

She never forgot the war. Ever after she would open packets of tea and sugar completely so that they were unfolded to let the very last grain out of the packaging. When we moved her out of the house we found tins of food being stored that were hugely out of date. Sheets and blankets in drawers still in their original wrapping; these things were being saved for a special occasion—they were far too good to use now.

She was on the verge of getting her third stripe when the war ended. They were offered the chance to transfer to the regulars but Dad opted to come out. They were married in Mortlake church in Surrey in March 1945.

They were still happily married when Dad died in 1999.

Maybe some more about Mum later. Now? I can’t. Sorry.