Writing for Fun
January 2016
I Never Thought I'd See Him Again - Joan Bond
'I never thought I would ever see him again,' I said to the new friend I had made. I was on a coach tour with Saga, it was to Switzerland across the Simplon pass then into Italy. I actually love the change as you enter Italy from Switzerland - one all regimental and sedate the other roof tiles falling off and the lorries have bits of string holding everything together.
S'pose that's why they wasn't interested in the war . . . the only clever ones really . . .
Anyway I had been chatting to this lady Hilda after the first day and realised we were at the same camp when called up for the war. I wanted to be in the WRENs as they have silk stockings and nice underwear and the WAAFs had interlock stockings and knickers, but although I had the qualifications I also was found to have a heart murmur, so wouldn't be able to go overseas.
Anyway HiIda shared a barracks with me and hadn't changed that much. After all the six week training I was sent off to learn teleprinting and moved on to a base in an office in London attached to the War Office. Then to Uxbridge, an airfield where I ended up in the Traffic Control room, moving small wooden aircraft across a map as the German aircraft were crossing the coast when they created more havoc.
Being near London we had control with ten other airfields on the east coast, and although we were safe five floors underground we still felt the damage when rising up and out after the six hour shift. Hilda had been to several offices but was then in 41 taken to a secret location to work to with the Royal Engineers as a map reader. They were drafted in to read old maps of German cities as a start, then lone pilots flew in low over all destinations, taking pictures in a cross section of the areas the negatives were blown up to a decent size and where anything unusual became noted and were produced as target maps for Bomber Command. She said it was very straining on the eyes but very illuminating as to what the Germans were up to . . . and it was a lot! They were very clever and of course well prepared for a long war. The large house was known later as Operation Hillside but very hidden and incredibly secret.
Well back to the guy. We all sat and chatted in the evenings and I remembered the guy, who as a pilot was one of the gang who met at the little country pub sometimes and I had even gone out with him, but all of a sudden he disappeared and I thought he had been transferred but in fact had come down over France and was posted missing. I asked him about it and he said like many others he had been taken in by the French and got home via Spain. It hadn't been easy as the Spanish were supposedly neutral but in fact were sympathetic to the Germans and Bill had been imprisoned for two years there.
As we got to know each other during the evenings and still reminiscing gradually others came to join us putting in their experiences. A very aged, seemingly slightly posh lady joined in saying she was one of the gals who flew in the Spitfires from the factories to the aerodromes. She said the girls had flown the planes on their own with little marked maps, not always small planes either and one particular occasion a Welllington bomber. On landing was immediately turned aside for five men crew to take over as if they thought she might have ruined the kite. Another said she had worked in the WI and was at Portsmouth when the ships were bringing the boys home from Dunkirk they were plying them with cups of tea and sandwiches and what she couldn't forget was the fact that the men had no shoes – cast off to walk out to the boats in the water was guessed.
This brought another comment from a woman who lived in Portsmouth and as a young girl used to ride her bicycle to work each day. One morning a single plane flew along the path by the port side and strafed the people walking and all she could think of please don't shoot my tyres on the bike as its hell trying to replace them.
I sat back and looked at them all and thought what started as a coach of elderly, quiet reserved people ended as a coach of friends all chatting and lively but I couldn't persuade them to write their stories because they said folk wouldn't be interested. Perhaps that's why the British won the war . . . we are so bloody laid back! I was taking the last bus home when Doris and John, one of the couples, told me that they met at Bletchley Park one in the engineers on the 'bombs' and she as a typist on the codes and have never spoken of it together as they were sworn to secrecy.