Читать книгу Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary - Joan Rice - Страница 12

It's unbelievable that to go from Hendon to home all that needs to be done is a short train journey. The two worlds are so much further apart than a journey through a wasteland; howling wind and outer darkness seems fitting to bridge the gap. Even now at home this evening I belong here no longer. I should have had my leave from Sunday night to Monday night, but on Saturday evening I learnt that I'm to be transferred to Ruislip tomorrow and so was allowed home before the change. I'm lucky to get a permanent job so quickly. Hendon is a training centre for the WAAF and most people are there longer than I've been. The thing I've hated most about Hendon is having no definite work but hanging around a crowded orderly room all day with nothing to do and everybody looking at you as if you should be busy. In fact, had I written this up last Tuesday (can I possibly have been in the Air Force only six days?), I would have reflected on the deepest depths of despair to which the human soul can reach. I was so miserable I could no longer think nor reason, just move in a fog of despondence. Fortunately misery cannot go on being misery eternally (that's why hell's such a dumb idea), and my emotions rose until now, when I'm glad that while the war is on I'm in the WAAF.

After this war I might be quite well off. Shell are saving one pound a week for me for the duration in addition to my Provident fund (staff who volunteered for war work were still considered as employed by Shell), and I've heard that we may get gratuities at the end of the war. I'll have to go back to Shell for a bit for decency's sake and then Heigh Ho for the world and adventure. I haven't told you yet all about life in the WAAF but I'm going to have a bath and will maybe write more later.

(Much later in the afternoon. Raining and raining and raining outside and us all warm before the fire.) We light a fire in the downstairs room and sit around it, singing sometimes with a girl called Renee,⁵ just back from Germany, playing the accordion, and sometimes talking and going one by one to the bath if we have managed to coax the boiler into a blaze. I like all the girls in our house except the one called Scotty who unfortunately is in the same bedroom as me. I think there's something wrong about her. I've heard Mickey⁶ and Joyce talking about it but they won't tell me. I must look innocent. It's very annoying.

The working part of the day is, as I've said, foul (I am a trained secretary) but you can get out of most of it by going to games and drill. The food is really quite good if the way of eating it very primitive. I shudder to think of my table manners when this war is over, but I shall be tough what with marching, early rises and hard beds. They have some very good cheap cinema shows in the aeroplane hangars, concerts for the troops and games in the evening like fencing and badminton.