← WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk
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Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. Hello and welcome to our series of Family Stories, the podcast written by you, the listeners. Today we're doing a special Family Stories episode focused on the too often overlooked role of women during the war. This week we're starting with a story from Rupert.
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Yes, and Rupert says my grandmother was definitely the matriarch of the family, but to me she was just Granny. And as a teenager, I loved nothing more than sitting with her and Granddad chatting away together as she darned a sock with Tora, tora, Tora replaying in the background for the umpteenth time, I knew she'd been a radio operator in the war. After all, that's how she met Granddad, having been posted from her native Yorkshire to Suffolk, there meeting this handsome young farmer, her future husband. But it was only at her funeral in 2006, when John Wariker, the editor of the World War II book with Britain in Mortal Danger, stood to give the eulogy, that I realized that she had in fact been a member of the Special Operations Executive. Warwicker described how the 19 year old Yoland, posing as a radio operator, was in fact one of the first members of Churchill's secret army trained to operate behind enemy lines in the event of a German invasion. Coordinating guerrilla sabotage from an underground zero station in a never recorded location. Suddenly many of Granny's fast eyed stories made a lot more sense. It was tremendous fun, I remember her saying, being a 19 year old woman, baroning up and down the country, commandeering trucks and what have you. I'd never have had that opportunity if there hadn't been a war on. On another time she said, well of course we'd been trained to fire a machine gun from the hip, but they decided we need to be trained on proper guns. So they took us down to the riverbank and we shot at big targets across the river. The problem was I was so little that even while I was lying down, every time I fired this huge rifle it knocked me backwards. My first shot went below the target, my second hit it, but my third went over the riverbank and hit the commandeer's stately home behind. After that they decided we'd had enough of weapons training. Granny always knew her own mind and several times told me if the Germans came we were supposed to go down into a hidden bunker in the woods. But I thought, well it'll only take one grenade down the hatch and I'll be finished. So I was going to climb a tree. At least I'd see them coming. I never appreciated she was describing an official part of the British resistance planning. Apparently in her role as radio operator she was the first person in England to know that Rudolf Hess had defected. Freak weather conditions, allowing her to pick up the local Scottish communication in Suffolk, a distance record at the time. In the modern era of instant global communication, it's easy to forget how manual and patchy comms were in those days. Having previously been turned down for the service in Africa because in her words, Monty didn't want women in his army. When an opportunity opened up for service in India in 1943, Yoland was keen to take it up. She let her local gentleman friend know over dinner that evening. That's a shame, said the man who was to become my granddad. I was going to ask you to marry me. Proposal such as it was accepted. I think Granny was always disappointed not to have been able to take her forces career a step further. But she was able to see out the war in charge of a local radio post and a long life commanding large and thriving family and household that followed. Best wishes and keep up the fantastic Podcast and that story was was from Rupert.
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Amazing stuff. Well this story is from Adrian. Clearing my late father's papers recently I came across some documents and a book, Prison Life on a Pacific Raider about the extraordinary story of his aunt Phyllis and her encounter with a German merchant raider in the South Pacific in November of 1940. On 26 November 1940 the liner and cargo ship Orangutane loaded with 14,000 tons of food and wool left Auckland bound for Liverpool. It had 111 passengers including 22 nurses and the children they were escorting plus the crew of 202. Amongst them was Phyllis, aged about 49, a nurse who was returning home to the UK having volunteered to accompany children being evacuated to Australia from England in October. She'd written to her mother saying that she'd arrived in Australia and that her mother should not expect her back until February or even March the following year 1941. She had no idea how wrong she was to be. During the early hours of 27 November the comet, a German merchant raider appeared in front of the Rangitang. As dawn was breaking with the Rangitang only 400 yards away the Comet immediately swung back its false deck, hoisted the German flag and fired warning shots. The Orangutan altered course and fired back from a stern mounted gun. Then it began transmitting the British code signal QQQ for I'm under attack by enemy surface ship. The Comet began firing broadside from its three 5.9 inch guns and other smaller weapons. It was an unequal duel. The Rangatane was quickly set on fire and the fight ended when a direct hit put her stern gun out of action. One report is that five of the passengers and five of the crew were killed. Another said that 25 were killed. The liner's remaining lifeboats and the Comet's motorboats transferred the crew and passengers to the raiders prison quarters. When all the passengers and crew were on board the Comet sunk Rangitayne by torpedo. Karl Merton, a gunner on the Comet said of Phyllis, the hero of the Rangitay was a nurse. She had been badly hurt. Her jaw had been terribly smashed by a shell splinter. But she flatly refused to go to a hospital on his ship until she had seen the wounded children taken care of. She must have been in agony from her wound and weak from loss of blood. Aboard the Comet the nurses started to treat the wounded. Although the German doctors equipment and medical stores were very limited and d in the first World War the scores lint and the small quantity of wool showed sterilization dates of 1915-18, Phyllis the Nurse, was badly wounded. Her jaw had been smashed by a shell splinter, her left arm broken. She had lost two fingers on her left hand and her right arm was in such a bad way that it needed to be amputated. According to reports by the Germans, the patients were cheerful and made light of their many troubles. The doctor and others were most impressed by the pluck and tenacity shown by Phyllis saying, it is not your army, your navy or your air force we fight. It is this British spirit. One asked, do you English women never cry? What would be the good? We have no handkerchiefs, came the response. Food for all the prisoners was very poor and in short supply. So was water. On 30 November, Phyllis's mother in England received the following extract from the Children's overseas reception Board. We deeply regret to inform you that the ship in which Phyllis was returning from Australia is reported to have been lost through enemy action. There are no particulars yet of the survivors and it is possible that the passengers may either be in lifeboats or in enemy hands. It must not be presumed at this stage that they have lost their lives, as, however, the news of the loss of the ship may be published at any moment. I thought it only right to tell you the position as we know it. We realize the depth of anxiety and suffering this will cause, but there is still hope that the passengers and crew may be safe. The Comet with its prisoners steamed north towards its next objective, the phosphate island of Nauru, almost on the equator. The Comet and her fellow raider Orion approached Nauru on 8th December and were presented with an incredible piece of good luck as off Nauru were five British freighters. All five ships were sunk, but the German ships had to take on more prisoners. 495 crew members and passengers of seven sunken ships were now packed into the suffocating tropical heat of the prisoners quarters. In the Comet, the Orion and their supply ship Culmaland. The Germans were very keen to get rid of the passengers as soon as possible as they were draining the rations and water. Plus there was the risk of disease or attempts to seize the ships. On 19 December, most of the prisoners, including Phyllis, were dropped off on the island of Emirau in the Sea of Bismarck, although 200 were kept on the ships and went all the way back to Germany. Once transferred ashore, the sick and wounded were laid on straw mattresses and the only motor vehicle, a truck belonging to a planter, took an advance party to his house 10 miles away. Later, when it was Cooler. The sick were put in the truck while the rest walked. Although there was some food and plenty of fruit, coconuts and pawpaw, the planter had six months of food for two people, so immediately food and water became rationed. Accommodation and bathroom facilities were very rudimentary with 60 women and 18 children sleeping in a wooden hut. The men slept outside. There was a camp bed which was allocated to Phyllis and a small first aid box. The captain of Rangitayn had given his word to the Germans that he would not send for help for 48 hours. As soon as the 48 hours had elapsed, the island's little motorboat, which the Germans hadn't spotted, set off for Kavieng, 72 miles away, which had the nearest wireless station. At this stage, the nurses were using palm leaf bandaging for Phyllis's injuries. On Christmas Eve, as food stocks, except for fruit, were almost finished, a naval patrol boat appeared. Subsequently they all had a lengthy transfer onto the line of Nellore which took them to Australia. On 2 January 1941, the Nellore docked in Townsville, Australia. Eight days after leaving Emirau, Phyllis's mother received a telegram dated 2nd January 1941. Glad to inform you that your daughter reported safe. Two days later she received another cable received confirming that your daughter is safe but regret seriously wounded. The following is an extract from a letter sent to phyllis's mother on the 3rd of January by the children's Overseas Reception Board. We have just received a cable from our representative in Australia confirming the fact that your daughter has landed in that dominion. But I regret to say that she is seriously wounded. She is reported to have lost one arm and the other is badly injured. She is also suffering from facial injuries. By the time of disembarkation the party was in a very bedraggled and poor state, some still with injuries of varying severity, many with septic bikes, sun blisters, boils, several with laryngitis, all very underweight and wearing all sorts of cast off clothing. The next day the party boarded a train bound for Brisbane. All through the trip the returning prisoners were met by cheering crowds at stations and an abundance of food. In Brisbane they were taken to the Canberra Hotel while medical staff had set up an improvised first aid station. The next day, the 5th of January, they boarded the train for Sydney. In Sydney, the wounded were taken to St. Vincent's Hospital where they received the skilled attention many so badly needed with severe facial injuries, her right arm amputated, her left arm broken and her hand mutilated. Phyllis was in St. Vincent's for many months. Initial plastic surgery was carried out on her face in Danuwerke, New Zealand, where she had worked for a time. The local branch of the Registered Nurses association began to raise money for her for the multiple surgeries Phyllis required. Other nursing groups around the country also pitched in. Phyllis subsequently underwent further plastic surgery in New Zealand to repair her severe facial injuries in late 1941 or sometime in 1942. She later returned to England, but few details are available. Some 85 years after these events, it is difficult to really appreciate the fortitude and resilience shown by Phyllis, not to mention the magnitude of the suffering she must have gone through during those six weeks. The agony and shock as well as psychological trauma of a major facial wound. There is no mention as to when or how her arm was amputated on a ship with rudimentary medical facilities. What about anaesthetic sterile conditions and equipment or drips? And the numerous ship to boat and back again transfers? Difficult enough with two hands, but on a stretcher, plus a truck trip to Emirau and train journeys in Australia, all in stifling heat and humidity with minimal water and the flies and mosquitoes on the island. Back in the uk, Phyllis was fitted with an artificial arm and then worked at the West Middlesex Hospital instructing patients in occupational therapy and also with the British Limbless Ex Servicemen's association. She died in 1967. And that story was from Adrian.
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Our next story is from Sam. I love your family stories. Right, Sam. And the focus on micro history, in many instances, on the lives of ordinary people living through an extraordinary time in history. Well, yes, Sam, that's what it's all about. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Anyway, Sam continues. My grandmother, Mag was only a child during the Second World War, but she witnessed one of the most important periods in history and remembers parts of it well. Now almost 90, she was an evacuee from South London during the war. She has early memories of air raid sirens and time spent in various air raid shelters, but being a child didn't really appreciate the seriousness of it all. At some point she was evacuated to Devon with her two sisters, one of them in her late teens, who was tasked with looking after them all. Their mother, my great grandmother, eventually joined them. This was because the elder sister contracted scarlet fever and was ill for some time before recovering somehow. My great grandmother found work at RAF Dunkerswell, a local RAF base, which then became an American air base from which anti submarine missions were launched. Mag remembers many of the Yanks being incredibly friendly, generous and sharing their exotic food items regularly. So much so that my grandmother thought that she and her family had a pretty good war, certainly never going hungry. She was also given a beautiful teddy bear by an American airman, which she regrets no longer having to this day. My grandmother grew up to love country life, and she bought a place in nearby Cornwall as an adult, which she still has to this day. We spent many a summer holiday down at my nan's place in Cornwall growing up, and as a boy, I was fascinated by the county's own connection to the war. There are several wrecks off Whitsam Bay, including a Liberty ship sunk by a U boat and various vessels sunk by mines, as well as remnants of many gun emplacements up and down the coast, such as at Rame Head, which overlooks the entrance to Plymouth Sound, the perfect place for a youngster like me to explore the craggy cliff faces and immerse himself in history. It was a different time, and I often struggled to comprehend the sacrifices made by ordinary people. My grandmother insists that they just got on with it because they didn't know any different. And being a child, she was perhaps quite naive. It felt like an adventure. My grandparents inspired my love of history, particularly the Second World War. And that story was from Sam.
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This story is from Lisa. You might be interested in a family whose most interesting World War II oral history comes from a grandmother. Well, yes, we are. So here goes. As the North African campaign wound down, the US army had large numbers of German prisoners of war to house and feed. One of the things the government needed were translators whose loyalty to the Allies could be trusted to monitor correspondence between the POWs and their families back home. My grandmother was fluent in both High German and in Low German, but she was an American by birth, and she passed the background checks. The mail from POW camps was routed to a central office in New York City, where my grandmother worked as a civilian employee of the US army, reading German POW correspondence. Many of the letters from the camp she was assigned to monitor were complaints about the Texas summer heat. Incoming letters from families in Germany were also part of her work, and sometimes useful intelligence came her way when the German censors were careless. One letter in particular was written by the mother of a prisoner of war who was working in a factory in Germany. She wrote to describe her walk on the way to work. The German censors had cut out anything that could identify what type of factory she was working in or where she was located. But the return address, which had also been cut out, had fallen inside of the envelope. Of course, my diligent grandmother wrote up a report. One of my uncles later researched what that could have meant, based on her recollection of that letter. And our family's best guess is this report was one of the pieces of intelligence that led to the air raid on Regensburg and Schweinfurt in August 1943. Go Grandma. She must have been good at her job, because towards the end of the war, the government tried to recruit her for field work. At that time there were worries the Nazis might try to regain power, so the US government wanted people who could blend in and monitor what was happening. It was easier to write a cover story for a woman. They were serious enough. They sent two men to the house to recruit her for undercover work, telling her it was her duty. But her youngest child, my father, was just turning five years old. She didn't think it would be right to leave him behind, Although her reasons are totally understandable, Part of me has always wished she'd said yes, because it would be fun to refer to her as Grandma the Spy. Best regards and thank you for your podcast. And that story was from Lisa. Some Follow the Noise Bloomberg follows the
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And this story is from Philip. This is a shortened version of my Polish aunt's adventures from September 1939 to mid-1940, told to me in 1983. And these are our own words. Her name was Anna, nicknamed Hanka. This is Anna Hanker's words. I was born on March 14, 1917 and grew up as a Catholic in Kalnikov in southeastern Poland, near what is now the Ukrainian border. My father was an alcoholic. I can tell you what he did, and I had little to do with him. Before the war broke out, I lived with my mother on the edge of a large forest. It was a beautiful place, not far from the big cities. We would travel anywhere by train or even by horse and cart. Life was idyllic. Poland had been free for about 20 years following the First World War. When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the Germans came first. Then the Russians arrived from the East. Soon after, the Germans left by mutual agreement. That's when the looters came. One night they broke into our home. I recognized one of them from school, though he wore a mask. I said, what do you want? I'll give it to you. But he grabbed me by the neck, threw me to the floor and pressed a gun to my head. I was bleeding. I still didn't quite understand what was happening. I felt like I was in a play. I didn't realize how serious it all was. You never really know how an occupation will change your life until it does. Back in 1939, I belonged to a Polish patriotic group, like the Solidarity movement in the 1980s. We were just seven girls. I don't think I understood the danger of the time. I collected food for resistance fighters and washed their clothes. You hate the enemy so much you don't care what you do. I must admit I actually quite enjoyed it. But it was really dangerous, and two events likely led to my eventual arrest by the Russians. I used to wear a white uniform while delivering supplies to resistance fighters in the forest, and someone must have reported me. Then there was a local election. I'd never voted before, but I remembered from school that you shouldn't have just one name on a ballot. At the polling station, a Russian commissar handed me a card of a single name. I asked him, what if I don't want to vote for this man? He looked over his glasses at me. I said in Russian, I don't understand this. And he replied, you will soon understand. Two days later I was on my way to Siberia. They came at night and took my mother and me. It was bitterly cold. You have no idea how brutal the Polish winter can be. It was February 10, 1940. There was a knock at 2am it was the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. I answered the door. A Russian soldier with a gun stood there. I asked, what do you want? Typical of me. I've never been scared in the face of danger. They arrived on sledges with horses. We weren't even allowed to go to the toilet. One soldier shoved me onto the sledge and off we went to the train station. Hundreds and thousands of people were already there. It was awful. We traveled in cattle trucks. 40 people squashed into a wagon and no toilets. They gave us a chunk of black rye bread and boiled water. We traveled like that for three weeks in winter. God, it was cold. You couldn't wash. And the lice multiplied so quickly. I'll never forget it. Not everyone survived the journey. Women and children died. I remember one man and I cut a hole in the floor for a toilet, shielding it with a blanket. The train stopped once a day for water. But during the Russian winters, queues for hot water stretched endlessly. After arriving at the final station, we were loaded onto sledges again, flat on our stomachs and tied down so we wouldn't fall. We traveled like this for three days and nights through the Ural Mountains. No one told us where we were going. It was terrifying. At the camp, the commander greeted us. Do you know why you're here? Nobody answered. He said, you're going to die here. My mother and I were quite lucky because we were put in a house and shared with another woman and her two children. We had a small room, but it was freezing. The winter lasted nine months. The three months of summer were so intense you could see plants growing in real time. They had to rush before the frost returned. We would pay for each task we completed. I chopped trees, and a man would measure the wood and pay me accordingly. Never more than 20 Kupeks a day. For reference, a loaf of bread cost 80. Food was scarce, but people shared what little they had. In such conditions, selfishness disappears. There was still defiance, even in the camps. Once, a fellow inmate asked me for help. We found the meeting hall unlocked and pulled down a portrait of Stalin. I poked out the eyes. It felt good, but from that moment I was always suspected. If anything happened, I was summoned. Once the camp commander questioned me, did you do it? I stared into the commander's eyes and said, no, again and again. I got away with it, but only just. The next time, though, I wasn't so lucky. I told a joke while working in the forest. In the joke, God called Hitler to heaven, turned to Hitler and said, you will never have peace of mind as you've murdered so many people. Stalin unexpectedly called in too, and God said to him, what do you want? And Stalin replied, excuse me. I thought that they sold sugar here. It was a jab at wartime shortages. The foreman overheard us laughing and asked me to tell him what was so funny. I repeated the joke, but he didn't find it so amusing. When I got home, the camp commander had me arrested. They'd locked me in a wooden hut full of rats. It was Easter and I spent the entire week there. My mother would sit outside the hut and cry. She was convinced that was the end of me, but I told her I'd survive. In August 1941, an agreement between Poland and the USSR granted amnesty to prisoners. Finally we were free to go, but we were given no help to get out of the Soviet Union. My goal was to find the Polish army. My husband was a prisoner of war in another camp, but everything was so secret, so we had no idea of where he was. We were really very lucky because there was a young Russian doctor who came to me one evening and gave us some money to get out. It was two months of her salary. This proves how terribly warm hearted people could be, even in such a terrible conflict. She said, don't stay here, try to get out. So I took that money and off we went. My mother and I began walking. We had no choice but to walk and it was early winter again. Getting onto a train was very difficult because there were Russian soldiers wounded from the front and they had priority using the railways. It took four weeks on foot to reach a train station. My feet were so frostbitten that I couldn't walk any further. We were sitting on the platform when a Russian officer approached. I explained my situation in Russian. He said, they weren't going our way, but they'd get us close. They put me on a stretcher, shaved our heads and dressed us in Russian uniforms to avoid trouble. We traveled for two weeks, then arrived at a station where the Polish army was stationed. My mother and I left the Russians to join them. Getting to the Caspian Sea was hard. The railway system was straining to move the Red army westwards, evacuating factories and workers to the east, as well as coping with the flow of Poles from the north to the south. There was a Polish general in charge and the army's wives had first priority. But my husband was in the hospital with typhus, so couldn't add our name to the list. I said to the general, my husband was a soldier in the Polish Army. Could you tell me when that transport is going? Nobody could tell us where or when it was going. The trains often left suddenly and departures were unannounced. We thought that we were all going to Poland, you see, to assist the Russians in pushing the Germans out. We had no sense of direction. Anyway, I went to the station with my mother. We finally knew when the train was leaving and not where it was heading. We stayed there for a few days. I had made my mind up that I was not going to let the train leave without us. So when it arrived, all the people who were on the list were packed in, and I just pushed us on too. You had to be brutal and push, otherwise we would not have survived. The general was in charge and running around the list, checking us. He looked at me and said, who are you? So I gave my name and he said, you're not on the list. And I said, no, I'm not, but explain the situation. He told us he couldn't be responsible for us and that we would likely struggle to get out of the country once we arrived. I told him not to worry, that I would deal with that when it happened. We eventually arrived at the Caspian Sea in August 1942, nearly one year after we'd left the labor camp. The general came to see me. He said, the Russian immigration officer will not allow you to leave. I was told to go and talk to the Russian immigration officer. So I spoke to him in Russian, explained the situation and asked him what he was going to do with me. He said, according to the regulations, the usual. But I cut him off and said, look, I know you're going to send me back to where I came from. I sort of joked around with them and said, I am not going. One of them eventually said, oh, just let her go. She's a nice girl. That was it. Just a bit of luck, nothing else. I remember going back to the Polish general and giving him a huge hug. I thanked him very much and told him I was free to go. He looked at me and said, where the devil can't exist, send a woman. And that was that. We crossed to Pahlavi and Persia, now Iran, finally free from Russian influence. But then I got typhus. I was unconscious for days, but somehow survived. The Shah of Persia turned his summer palace over to the Red Cross so that the Poles could be treated. After I recovered, I was sent to one of the residences in Tehran. It was a beautiful place, like paradise. They gave us wine, plenty of fruit. It really helped us. I was there for about three weeks, and then I went back to the displaced persons camp, sleeping on the ground under one blanket. But after what we'd been through, it wasn't too bad. I started to learn English in Tehran after I recovered from typhus. I had five English Russians, and from there I taught myself. I then moved to Karachi, then part of India. They kept us in one camp and then took us onto tents in the desert. It was Hot during the day and freezing cold during the night. We lived day to day and, you know, life was sometimes pretty tough, but we got through it. After the war ended in 1945, my mother returned to Europe, to my brother's farm in France. But she eventually went back to Poland. I didn't return. It wasn't the Poland I knew. Instead, I went to a refugee camp in East Africa. I kept learning English and worked as an interpreter. Eventually I got a job at a prep school in Kenya, married an Englishman in 1952 and in 1965, came to live in England. Even after everything, the whole thing was an experience I would not have missed. I learned so much from it. It helped me to appreciate the little things in life. For instance, when I listened to people saying that they'd got this and that. None of that means anything to me anymore. It's nice to have certain things and comfort, but if we didn't have them, it really wouldn't matter. Possessions don't mean that much to me. The only things that have value are the people and the stories we tell. Whoa. What a story indeed. And that was from Philip, who sent that in. I mean, crikey.
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Our final story is from Alexander. Here we go. Although, Alexander, you got an issue trying to top that. Let me say this much. My brother Tim and I grew up in the 1970s and probably similarly to a number of listeners of the podcast Airfix, Models, Commando books and World War II films are a staple of our childhood. And it sounds like a fantastic upbringing that Alexander not knocking that. We were aware that both our parents had served in the war, though what they did was never really discussed. Our father, Rex Justam, had only turned 18 in 1944 and he knew he'd joined the Navy, not seen active service, but was involved as an engineer with radar, a career he subsequently pursued. We knew our mother, Barbara Howitt, had been in the Women's Auxiliary air Force, the WAAF, and had spent more time in service, having turned 18 in 1941. But we did not know what she'd actually done. Any inquiries, shamefully limited on our part, were met with. I was in the waf. We knew more about her older brother, who was a doctor in the RAF and had been part of the Italian campaign. As we became adults in the 1990s, our mother started to reveal, every so often, a bit more about what she'd actually done. We now realise with hindsight, once the 50 years of the Official Secrets act had passed. She was a good linguist and we knew she spoke Italian well. Having lived in Italy after the war. But it turned out she also spoke German very well, though only learning the language at school. On signing up to the WAAF and after a language test, she had in fact been posted to the Y service. I recall her mentioning she was the only non native speaker in her unit, with many of her peers being refugees from the German speaking areas of Europe. Her role was to listen in to German pilots and curiously, she was someone who could always tune our radio very well, despite otherwise not being very mechanically minded at all. She also had a good knowledge of Morse code, which again had always seemed odd to us both. When in later years we did ask about her experience, she would mention how you became quite familiar with certain pilots over time, especially their style of communication. She sometimes reflected on the more harrowing aspect of the role which was listening to the consequences of battle. Over the years we learned that she had been posted to a variety of places in the UK and would often say how much she liked Montrose in Scotland and how cold the sea was there. She told us she would often relax after a shift by going for walks along the beach with her dog Prang. One day on exiting the beach, she was challenged by a sentry on duty and was told with some wonder that she and Prang must lead charmed lives as the beach had been mined the day before. However, it was only after she died and when sorting through her papers that my brother, a commercial airline pilot since his 20s, went through a handwritten logbook of her learning to fly in an airspeed Oxford. These dates are December 1943 to January 1944 and must have been during her time in Montrose as she mentions flying over Balmoral and Ballater. Despite all the years he had been flying, she had never discussed this with him. Our mother was posted to Chigwell in June 1945 and discharged in December 1945. Our uncle, her brother, would later say that he suspected she must have been in something hush hush, as her service would not have ended so quickly after the war as it did. Despite being very close to her brother, she had clearly never told him. After the war, in 1946, she went to Milan to pursue the career she had wanted to do since she was 11 and became an opera singer. By 1948 she was back in London singing with the Karl Rosser, and in 1951 she joined the company at the Royal Opera House as a mezzo sopran. She performed in over 75 performances during the 1950s, shared a dressing room with Joan Sutherland and performed Suzuki and Madame Butterfly. With Victoria de Los Angeles. She's probably best known by film buffs from the scene in Hitchcock's the Man in youn Too Much, where James Stewart and Doris Day are trying to stop an assassination in the Royal Albert hall during a concert. She is singing the Storm Clouds Cantata throughout this scene, which lasts 12 minutes without any dialogue, as is so often the case for many people. We wish we had asked more questions while we had the opportunity. Our mother was very much always of the present and did not really dwell on either her time during the war nor in fact her career as an opera singer. She was more interested in the here and now, her family and friends. Years later, I've done some research on her war records and found she was moved within two days of arriving at RAF Innsworth in December 1942 to RAF West Kingsdown and then on to raf Cheadle in 1943, of which the Y station at Montrose was a part. According to the Bletchley website, a Google image search of WAF Y service once produced this attached photo. The entire family believes the woman standing in the middle is our mother, the image said. It was most likely taken at West Kingsdown, which makes it even more likely. And that story was from Alexander. Fascinating stuff. Absolutely amazing. That's all for this episode. If you've got a family story, you'd like to be considered for the show and whatever it is, because every single one of these stories is part of the granular detail that helps find a full picture of the Second World War. If you've got a family story you'd like to consider for the show, please email it to us@wehavewaysolehanger.com and if you do have any photos or images alongside these stories we can have your permission to use too. Please include them with submission and they'll go up on the on the socials, as we say. And don't forget, label the email Family Stories so we can't miss it. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks to our contributors Rupert Alston, Adrian Duffield, Sam Watson, Lisa Breauer and Philip Fryer. Thanks very much for listening. Cheerio. It.