Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary. Joan Rice
have a large room intended for three but which we trust to keep exclusively to ourselves, and now we have got it straight we have to keep on looking to believe it's true. One thing it lacked was a table. Remembering that No. 7 was condemned anyway we decided that we, as well as anyone else, might as well enjoy the pickings. With this in mind Joyce and I carried out the table under cover of the blackout down Booth Road, but even in a blackout a table is not easy to disguise. We were caught on our new doorstep by Johnston, one of the girls downstairs, but were able to laugh it off airily and take it upstairs, without removing any great part of the staircase wall, where it now rests, very fetching with our wireless on it.
Later in the evening Joyce returned to collect the last of her luggage from No. 7, while I washed and scrubbed in the bath. Frances and Mike and some chaps had returned from the cinema and cried angrily about the missing table. Joyce not only denied stealing it but questioned a justly indignant Mickey about its disappearance. She was about to depart when Frances asked if she could come round in the morning and see what sort of room we's got. ‘Yes,’ said Joyce, turning a little blue. The table is very large and very obvious. The situation is not what I's call happy.
13 November 1939
Coming back here from leave I was told that breakfast had been changed from the ladylike hour of eight to the grey and ‘still a few stars’ time of 7.15 in order that we may come back later and clean up our respective houses. Still, in compensation, the WAAFs themselves have taken over the cooking completely and everything now is cleaned and better and – excess of refinement – we have flowers on the tables.
15 November 1939
Coming back in the Tube, an overheard dialogue: ‘What's she?’ (I had my uniform on, at least all of it I've got which includes a hat.)
‘Oh’ – contemptuously – ‘Fire Service.’ (Me sitting there with ‘RAF’ bang in the middle of my uniform.)
‘Why don't you join it?’
‘They only take all those society and titled people.’
Visible attempt from me to look society and titled.
20 November 1939
On Saturday Joyce and I and two other girls got given tickets for an ice hockey match at Wembley. We had simply super seats and enjoyed ourselves greatly, eating a great quantity of miscellaneous food and cheering immoderately. At about ten we left to see our home bus disappearing into the blackout. After forty minutes of waiting in the rain we were glad to see the next bus, so judge our disgust when the conductor told us that the last bus right through to Colindale went at eight o'clock A.M. After another wait we got a train to Wembley Park, and after a still longer wait in still heavier rain for a nonexistent bus we had to take a taxi back: not very kind on my slight finances. We had to be in by twelve as there had been a hell of a stink the night before when five WAAF came in at five in the morning from a night out at the Kit Kat Club with those forbidden gods, the officers.
Yesterday everybody else in the house was out so I lit a fire, ate a lot, went to bed with a bottle and listened in the darkness to The Thin Man on our wireless, and then slept until woken up by Joyce dropping her Optrex bottle at one o'clock in the morning. On the bottom of her bed was a pile of books brought from her home, all of them asking that I read them, and I'm starting tonight on Clement Dane's Will Shakespeare.
Tomorrow, those of us who were posted to Hendon move over to work at Station Headquarters, I with the job I've been hoping for: secretary to the Commanding Officer (CO), Mrs Rowley – small, dark, handsome, immaculate, sensible, intelligent, fair and so many things so few women ever are. Today I went up and collected my anti-gas clothing which consists of a five-times-too-large coat and a colossal hat. In all this, plus goggles and gas mask, I certainly shan't die of a gas attack. I'll be suffocated long before that.
25 November 1939
One day last week in the inevitable rain I went over to Bunty's on late leave pass. My hat had been borrowed by another WAAF – twelve of us had been chosen to take part in a Tommy Trinder8 film and between us we had pooled our uniform resources to equip them creditably – and I arrived untidy, dirty and shabby but full of such confidence that neither clothes nor looks mattered at all.
I ate enormously, had a bath there by torch light as of course the Goldies9 had not got proper blackout curtains, and cleaner but with hair even more untidy went back to laugh and talk with Bunty, Bernie and Eric10 with such effect that Eric took me back as far as King's Cross. Sitting beside him in an empty Tube carriage and laughing with him over a coffee at King's Cross Station I tried to remember that a ‘to-be-remembered’ moment was happening and that I must savour it fully, but the time went on and then I was waving him goodbye, and when I was back at Hendon it was unreal and unhappenable. I wish I got these moods of get anything and confidence more often. When they come nothing can stop me. When I really want a thing it always happens.
I've had my first promotion in the WAAF. I was reclassified on Thursday to ACW111 from ACW2 and get, I think, sixpence more a day. I also went to Moss Bros today and ordered a second uniform (the first, I may say, is still to be issued to me), Mother having advanced me the money. I'm being fitted on Friday and it should be ready for me in ten days. I've optimistically and illegally had it made in officer's cloth.
29 November 1939
Such goings on. A girl called Single, known as Boompsie, who works over with 24 Squadron was in a room full of officers and who walked in but DAVID NIVEN, yes, really and truly, cross Single's fat heart. Single, needless to say, sat on immovable, to the surprise of her officer who had now finished with her, and looked and looked at the divine apparition. Rumour has it that he wants to join the RAF and still wilder rumour that he will be posted here. As a result WAAFs no longer go around as God made them, lanky hair, shining face and much dirt but have polished and pushed themselves into their pre-war shapes.
A further story re David Niven comes from Ghisi, the girl downstairs in our new house. She got the message that a Mr Niven was arriving today and please arrange transport. Ghisi arranged and Mr Niven arrived. Ghisi looked at him and left the room. Outside a cackle of officers informed her it was DAVID NIVEN. Back rushed Ghisi to hear an also unsuspecting squadron leader telling poor Mr Niven that all the transport she had been able to arrange was a Singer van. Seeing the van Mr Niven murmured faintly he's get a taxi. ‘Well,’ said the squadron leader heartily, ignoring Ghisi's ‘It's the film star’ in sign language behind his back, ‘get one from Hendon, not Golders Green. It's 2 shillings cheaper.’
This evening I have battled with fire. I lit the bedroom fire five times and the boiler three and conquered them both. I must be like those odd natives with the gift of chucking live fire about. I can now pick up and carry smoking coals without inconvenience. I also used the two inside pages of Ray Atkinson's Daily Telegraph but will be in bed and asleep before she returns.
5 December 1939
Joyce is sitting on the floor with her feet in our beastly little fire which is sulking because I've made it burn, reading half aloud Clement Dane's Will Shakespeare and being anxious because she's forgetting how to act. I am lying on the bed in my issued vest and pants,