Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary. Joan Rice
Express from my hand and said, ‘Hoorah, hoorah! The war will be over in six months. The Germans have done the very worst thing now’ – and a lot more hoorahs. In my heart I don't myself believe it but I spent the morning saying ‘six months of war and three months of cleaning up and I'll be in Paris by next April’.
In the afternoon we went to be inoculated and filed one by one into rugged grandeur's (the doctor's) office, to have our right arms pierced by the tetanus and our left by the anti-typhoid. I had no time to wait and think about it. Everyone else was genuinely indifferent. I didn't look at the needle. I was really quite brave – an improvement anyway on my screaming days at the dentist doorstep. ‘You'll feel awful in the evening,’ previously inoculated WAAFs told me, ‘freezing cold and nothing you can do will make you warmer.’
Accordingly, that evening I built up a colossal fire in my billet, piled blankets high on my bed with a further reserve on a chair, put on several jumpers and got to bed with a hot-water bottle, two aspirins, a box of cheeses, some broken chocolates, four buns and grapes from South Africa given to me by Bridget Prouse. I got extremely hot and soon went to sleep but the great frost came not at all. In the morning, noble to the last, I got up for breakfast. After breakfast I felt very odd and went back to bed. Finally I felt so foul I cast aside my book and unwisely toyed with the remains of last night's food. At lunchtime friends brought me a letter from Barbara. Cheered by that (she's asked me to Wales for my holidays), I tottered, pale and aching, to the Mess to work and on to a Chinese restaurant with Joyce, Mickey and Boompsie and finally feeling better to Bunty's where she and I laughed a lot about old days at school, while Mrs Goldie knitted (until she broke her needle and pulled it all undone) a year-old coat for a yet unborn baby. Eric listened and fed us with chocolates he's brought over with him for us.
16 April 1940
On Monday Boompsie and I, having no money (Boompsie is sharing my room as it is too large for one), lit the fire, turned on the wireless, got out books, mending etc. and looked sadly at two oranges, two pieces of chocolate cake and three tired tomato-flavoured cheeses. Suddenly there was a knock at the door which I, doing a French exercise and cursing, answered. And there stood Joyce with a car and £1. I pulled on my coat over my tattered slacks (my decent pair have been being cleaned for the last three weeks and I am too poor to reclaim them), my blue shirt and my yellow jacket and we drove down to the local fish and chip shop before returning to the fireside with fish and chips and lemonade and ginger beer. Joyce stayed till 11.30 and we laughed practically continuously.
Yesterday after meeting Mother I went on to my French class where Professor Bolitho told me of his love affairs, beginning at the age of eleven and apparently yet unended, with the seduction of a Girl Guide captain as the highlight. I enjoyed hearing it. I enjoyed discussing the varying moral outlooks of English and Europeans. I enjoyed his constant praise of me with remarks such as ‘J' aime les jeunes filles robustes fortes comme vous’. It did me good but after I left him my exit was shattered by the fact that I tripped and sprawled down the first flight of his stairs.
Going from there, I hurried through the rain to Lyons Corner House to meet dear old Margot Ainscough from Shell, in the uniform of an ATS.21 We went from there to the Regent Palace Bar where we discussed the varying lives of WAAF and ATS greatly to the Air Force's favour – so much so, in fact, that she's going to see if she can't get a transfer to the WAAF.
Before I forget, snappy Service sayings: ‘Up with the lark and to bed with the Wrens’; RAF = ‘running after fluff’.
22 April 1940
Sitting in the adjutant's office and looking out of the window to where the sun was shining and aeroplanes landing on the green new grass I thought suddenly, my life is contented now: I have an interesting new job (I'm working for the new Station Intelligence Officer who's from Yorkshire and stocky and going bald, with a lot of humour and at the moment a bad cold. He treats you as if you had as much intelligence as himself); I have a reasonably nice young man, Eric, and enough variety to keep away boredom from my leisure hours. Never in my life have my days been so round and snug and this is a war, a clash of civilisation. It is odd.
25 April 1940
Last night the WAAFs gave a dance. I had my hair done the night before and it was looking extremely nice. Everyone had been remarking on it, the boys in the Orderly Room teasing me about it. Just before I left the house, Boompsie called from the bathroom to say the tap had burst again, but as Becket, the house NCO, said she would get a plumber, I thought no more about it.
I danced with a lot of airmen, none very exciting, and at about 11.30 I met Boompsie and a drunk young Army officer: they said they were going on to a beer party when the dance ended and would I come. I said all right and we all of us went round looking for beer to buy and take away. Then one of the WAAF sergeants said she had heard about our planning and was coming along to our house to see we were in bed. I went to tell Geoffrey, the Army officer, this and explain it would be stupid to go. He said all right, come out with me tomorrow night, and kissed me in the hall in front of our senior sergeant; we were very drunk. He took my telephone number and said he's phone. Apparently he had made likewise promises to Boompsie and others (there's a dance up at his place and he was sent to collect a few WAAFs to go, preferably, I think, of the prostitute tendency).
Back in my billet no plumber had come, the kitchen was flooded, Becket had missed the dance and spent the evening bailing water and was very very mad. Lots of men with mud-encrusted boots had worn paths across our bedroom. I got into bed with two aspirins, lied to the disappearing sergeant about Boompsie and was awakened by her at 3.30 returning from the Army officer and a battle for her maidenhead. I swore at her with a language I never realised I knew, and woke again at seven to see water over our floor, the pipes having burst in the night. Becket and I spent the morning cleaning it up, a filthy job, and by 11.30 when we were finally finished we lay like two limp dirty dolls on our respective beds.
28 April 1940
On Friday I went with Eric to see Gone With the Wind, having food first at the Queens Bar where we laughed and he teased and was rude to me: a far pleasanter state of affairs. The film was a good copy of the book: I know the book so well I could tell every line of every dialogue. The best parts were Scarlett returning to her ruined Tara against utmost odds – misery, poverty, starvation – and her rigid will to succeed, to rebuild. I lost interest in the beautiful silk-wrapped well-fed woman at the end of the film, beyond a sense of stupid waste as she progressed unhindered in her killing of Rhett's love. Coming out we had supper and going down to my train, Eric kissed me: he didn't interest me at all.
7 May 1940
I went reluctantly with three other WAAFs and a lot of airmen in a large coal lorry over to Uxbridge to go to the dentist. The Air Force is really wonderful: even dental treatment is given us free. It's a comforting feeling to be fed and clothed and kept healthy by an impersonal higher being – it leaves so little to worry about. No wonder the Services are happy go lucky.
I have never been to such a good dentist who took endless trouble and never once hurt me. I had three injections for stopping the pain and have to go tomorrow to have one out.
The journey back was fun: it was a hot day so we rolled up the battered tarpaulin and the wind caught in it like a sail almost lifting us from the road. The airmen laughed and talked and the van rattled us about and everyone in the street stopped to smile at us. In the evening I cut the grass and cleaned the window – it's house inspection tomorrow.
9 May 1940
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