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Whit 2004 was an emotional time for the whole country as the Anniversary of the D-Day landings approached. It was doubly so for my mother, Lilian Bianchi, as she is the only surviving member of her family, all of whom fought in the war, her brothers serving in the Air Force and Army and she in the WAAF.

Whit holidays usually see my family travelling from the far corners of England to spend time together, having fun, getting to know new babies, sightseeing and cooking elaborate meals.

During Whit 2004 we were holidaying in north Lincolnshire, near to Newark Air Museum, sited on Winthorpe Airfield where my mother served in the WAAF during the Second World War. We were keen to visit the Museum, see what a Lancashire Bomber looked like and find out if we would have dared go for a spin in a Tiger Moth. My mother wanted to see if she would recognise faces or names in old snapshots. We did better than that …….but lets start at the beginning. Lilian remembers,

‘When I was 16 I was a florist. My elder brother had been a member of the St. John’s Brigade for a number of years and was called up for the Royal Army Medical Corps. He served in the middle east, in the battle area and was rested in Ceylon where he met and married his wife. My other brother was in the Royal Airforce. Although he would have liked to be part of the air crew he was colour blind and had to content himself with being an engineer. His first stop was Norway, where he was fortunate to escape with his life. They had to evacuate but unfortunately it was badly planned. It was light all night and the German bombers could attack the aerodromes. The ship he should have escaped on was bombed, he was delayed, and in 1942, reached home, via Scotland, in a fishing vessel wearing a borrowed greatcoat, no kit, and no identity papers. This dangerous and uncomfortable journey saved his life but left him with a badly burned leg. He recovered and was then dispatched to the war in the Mediterranean and Italy .

Although she wasn’t required to be in the armed forces at that stage, my mother thought that she’d like to be in the Women’s Auxiliary Airforce as she felt that she was supporting her brother. She’d done a bit of clerical work and so signed up to be a postal clerk for the WAAF. She received her call- up papers and a rail voucher, telling her to report for service to Bridgenorth, Gloucester on December 28, 1942. She says, ‘I was a bit overwhelmed, travelling alone to a strange life’.

The journey from Newcastle to Gloucester was a nightmare. She remembers arriving in the cold and dark, miles from civilisation, to be met by a request to remove her clothes for a strip examination, termed ‘FFI — free from infection’ with ‘little delicacy and no consideration.’

After an unappetising meal, she was taken to a cold Nissan hut and given three biscuits - hard portions of mattress, a roll for a pillow and some hard brown blankets and a ‘chilly sheet.’

Next day the new recruits were kitted out with huge blue knickers, called ‘Passion killers’ and a pair of winceyette pyjamas. My mother got a dress uniform which was a jacket and skirt, and a battle dress, which she describes as ‘Good quality but nor what we would have selected’. Lillian liked to have her collars starched properly, for dances and parades, so her mother gave her a hard box which she used to post collars to a Chinese laundry in Nottingham. Despite the buttons, which had to be shined, the great coat was handy as it could be used as an extra blanket to combat the Nissan hut chill.

Lillian was posted to London, Milbank, to receive training to become a postal clerk at one of the airfare bases. She found London exciting and remembers going with some other girls in the WAAF to the Hammersmith Palais for a dance. Indeed, she seems to have made a point of being first up on the dance floor in most situations.

After training Lilian was posted to an aerodrome near Bottisford, where it was back to sleeping in Nissan huts. In the morning, girls had to get up, dress, cycle to another building to wash, cycle back, get properly dressed., cycle to another building for breakfast, all the while listening to the sound of Lancaster bombers returning from night raids. The camp was huge and the runways extensive to accommodate the bombers take- off, so staff were issued with bicycles

My mother was a post office clerk and the post office was at the centre of camp life, collecting mail from various messes and delivering letters and notes telling people that their long awaited parcel had arrived. Some people even parcelled up laundry to be sent home and washed.

We had to do some square bashing in Morecambe, where we had quite a lively time, as there was an officers cadet training unit there. I was then posted to an aerodrome in Lincolnshire. Accommodation was very basic, we were in a Nissan hut with a stove at either end. We had an iron bed and a little box which had been a bomb container: this was your bedside table. There were a number of different trades in my hut. There were motor transport drivers who drove anything from the Group Captain’s car to a big truck. There were also some bat women who were quite funny with their tales of the goings-on in the officers’ mess. They sometimes brought us titbits of gossip and food. Another girl, one of my friends, was in the photographic department, which meant that she developed photographs taken from the air craft. Another was in the weather department. Then there were plotters who worked in the operations room and would plot the enemy aircraft and our aircraft. I was on two stations that were operational, that meant that aircraft flew out on bombing missions. The air crew flew Lancaster Bombers Being in the post office we heard quite a lot about the activities. We were at the centre of the camp, along with the Head Quarters. Our job was to sell postal requirements on the camp, empty post boxes and take them into the nearest town for despatch by a Motor Transport driver. Then collect mail and parcels addressed for our camp. These would be collected every morning. Sometimes parcels were left unclaimed so we’d ring up the Administration and would be given a new address if that person had been posted to a new station. Sometimes an aircraft would be shot down with the crew. Then the response was ‘He’s gone for a Burton.’ Some nights when you went to bed you’d hear the aircraft taking off and you’d wonder if they’d all return safely. I remember one young air gunner who lived in South Shields, whose Lanc. was shot down and they were all taken prisoner. They did eventually get back. We were very aware of the war and its consequences.

On other occasions I’d have some mail and not know where to send it on. I would get the reply, ‘Back to his home address, he’s L.M.F.’ which stood for ‘Lack of Moral Fibre’. This meant that the crew couldn’t cope with the fighting. They had to have various medical and psychological tests, but it wasn’t worth risking the lives of the other six crew members if a man was showing signs of stress. Some of the WAAF were discharged under Clause 10 which meant that the woman had got pregnant.
Really, though, you could have a good time without any trouble because there was quite a good social life on the stations. There were hundreds of people on the camp. On both of the stations there was a super dance band and we had regular dances in the various messes. An invitation to the Sergeant’s mess meant that there was a wonderful buffet meal as well as the dancing. The band were resident on the station but were sometimes invited to different places and they would take some of us along with them. I was fortunate that a Group Captain liked dancing the Old Time Waltz with me. He used to seek me out to dance, and on one occasion, took me flying in a Tiger Moth plane. I can remember that the air was clean and cold as we flew over Lincoln City. My brother had warned me about Group Captains, but we were friends.
There was a big NAAFI ( Navy, Army and Airforce Institution Canteen) on site, another social centre where you could buy coffee and buns. Occasionally they got cosmetics and we used to queue up for our share. I remember one of the names being Cyclax a hand and body cream, which we would save up and take home for our family with our chocolate ration, when we went on leave.
It wasn’t necessary to go out of camp much, but camp buses were run most evening and I remember going to see ‘White Christmas’ on one of these excursions. It was a very nice position to be in as most departments were kindly disposed to people who manned the post office. We had quite a bit of fun at the guard house with the various police on duty, threatening to arrest us if we didn’t supply them with some mail that day. In fact I’ve still got a warrant for my arrest, from a Sergeant Bickert arresting me for something or other.
We as a family were more fortunate than some families on Tyneside, as we all returned home. My brother George severely burned his leg when he was in Norway, and then was shipwrecked off the coast of Africa. Yet, he survived when some of his compatriots didn’t. Like a lot of other survivors, he didn’t share this experience with me, about his shipwreck, until just a few years ago, during the V.E. day remembrance celebrations.

A move to RAF Metheringham, an operational station near Lincoln followed, to a busy post office where my mother got to know everyone from air force men tot a Group Captain. The station had an unofficial dance band which played at Metheringham and other stations, and so were provided with a van to transport their kit, and members of the WAAF, which they would take along as dancing partners.

Group Captain McKecknie had his own Tiger Moth and offered to take my mother for a spin. Early one morning, she borrowed a flying helmet and wrapped up warm in her battledress. She says, ‘It was a beautiful morning, the air was cold in the open cockpit and of course the Group Captain showed off with a couple of loops and a spin over the towers and steeples of Lincoln. A truly memorable occasion.’

My sisters and I had heard the story of the Tiger Moth flight and were pretty impressed, but were even more impressed when we visited the Museum and came face to face with a reconstruction of a Tiger Moth. We always knew my mother was brave, just not how brave

It wasn’t all fun and dancing though. Flights had to be kept secret. They would leave in the evening and nightshift staff would wait to count them back in again. If a plane didn’t come back, the term used was ‘Gone for a Burton’ and affected everyone at the station. I asked my mother how much she had known about D-Day and she said, ‘Nothing. It had to be a secret.’ Obvious I suppose, to anyone who has lived through a war.

The next bit of my mother’s war involved a trade test which she passed with flying colours and was promoted to the rank of corporal. She was mentioned in despatches but sadly, didn’t value the oak leaf badge and so lost it towards the end of the war. It was at this stage that she was posted to Winthorpe, the present site of the Air Museum. She had two aircraft women and one man working for her at the post office, so it must have been a big operation, but more important, the billet was custom build and warm.

Social life on RAF Winthorpe was great. There were various nationalities in the aircrew and lots of West Indians on the ground crew, who were great jivers. Because of the unaccustomed cold climate, West Indians were given special rations of hot sweet tea every morning, full of evaporated milk and sugar. When my mother arrived to deliver post they would give her a mug of tea to help her along.

Toward the end of the war Lilian was posted to Upwood, which had married quarters where she met and became friendly with Belle Howlett, mother of two little boys and the wife of an airman from Sunderland, based at the station.

My mother was demobbed in 1946. And the story could end there, only it doesn’t. Because as we walked round the Air Museum, my mother recognised two of the airwomen who had worked in the post office at RAF Winthrope. I glanced at another photo and under it was my mother’s name. The caption read, ‘Lilian Clark………enjoys the station sports day’. We were thrilled It was wonderful to come face to face with a past life, a life of fear and hardship, but a life of fun, laughter and making the most of it.

As Lilian says, ‘It was an amazing experience, living a day at a time, doing what you could to help the war effort and having fun when and where possible.’

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