Warbird Information Exchange

Note this is a series of articles posted in the Toronto Star. Each with a different look from veterans of what they saw and where they were serving. I hope all enjoy these articles.

Never forget: The most awesome friendships ever

Margaret Allen recalls her experiences with the RAF Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, in Scotland, then later in India and Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.

Margaret Allen, originally from Wales, was a wireless operator with the Royal Air Force Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron during the Second World War. She was posted to Scotland, England and Wales, then dispatched by ship to India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The Star spoke to Allen before her death at 89 on Nov. 17, 2012.

I came from a small village in Wales. It’s quite famous because Dylan Thomas, the poet, lived there. This van was going through the village asking young people to volunteer, so I volunteered. But I was too young. When I was 18, I signed up and I served for almost five years.

When I was 18, the farthest I’d gone from home was five miles, maybe, on a train to my aunt’s place.

At one point, I was posted to Scotland, stationed at Prestwick, in a private house, right on the water. The house was called Stonegarth and there were about 10 of us there, all women. Stonegarth was a very old house. We shared bedrooms and a kitchen. We were what you’d call billets, I guess. I’m sorry to say, there was lots of snobbishness as to what you did. If you were like me, a wireless operator, we thought we were better than the cooks, but the ones above us, the plotters, they thought they were better than us. Plotters sat at a table and moved things around and most of them worked for officers. They weren’t all like that.

We used to go dancing in Glasgow. It was fun. But I saw a plane crash once. The planes took off from Prestwick and came over our house. This plane, just after it went over our house, went down into the water. I can still see it going down.

From Prestwick, I volunteered to go to India. Why I wanted to go, I don’t know. I guess I joined for the travel and adventure. One of the ships in our convoy was sunk in the Mediterranean, by U-boats, I guess. That was sad. We went by boat through the Suez Canal, which was fascinating. I remember it was very hot and locusts were flying all around. The locals were waiting and we would throw pennies and stuff down to them. And they would dive in and get them. The Suez Canal takes you from one kind of life to another. You come from a country that’s fairly advanced, Britain, and you go through these countries that have nothing, and it makes you think. So much poverty. But then, if you have money, it’s also very glamorous.

We landed in Bombay, which is now called Mumbai. I have a picture somewhere of us marching off the big ship. Then we went on a train, and I’d never been on a train like this before. The seats were wooden and we stopped in every little village and picked up fruit and stuff. It was two or three days before we got to New Delhi. We were put into a big building but it had no windows. They had modern shops and we worked in nice offices, but we didn’t stay there long. The people were very nice. The women were beautiful. They wore lovely saris. They had nice restaurants. I could never understand how some of the children were injured at birth so they could go and beg on the streets. And you see all these beggars.

From there we went down to Sri Lanka, a very pretty island — at least it was then. We flew from New Delhi and had to stop for gas in Bangalore, and the plane, I remember, had wooden seats, too. We were sent to a jungle station called Koggala. We were put in army trucks, all sitting in the back of the trucks, with wooden seats, for this drive to Koggala. It was an aerodrome then and it had a big lake in the camp, and it was all flying boats. Catalinas and Sunderlands. And there were crocodiles in this lake. I never saw one. We surveyed the ocean for the Japanese, coming north, and they’d send seaplanes from our camp to reconnoitre. I liked it there because we were right on the ocean. We did shift work, and this is where I saw my first bedbug and lots of snakes, poisonous ones, and mongoose, lots of mongoose.

We went swimming. The men had made a little blown-up hole in the rock and we swam in there. I didn’t like to go in the ocean. They said there were sharks. We had a theatre to show movies. It was made out of husks. You went in there to eat and you bought a lot of fruit from the vendors. But you couldn’t eat the bread. It was full of ants. You’d pick out the black dots and you’d have a holey bread.

Yeah, there were love interests. A lot of girls got married, especially down in Koggala. I have pictures of weddings I was invited to. Some of them were very big, and I still keep in touch with one girl who got married there. Her husband is still alive and they live in Newcastle, England.

I don’t think I’ve had friendships that were as genuine as that. I don’t think you ever feel that you have the same comradeship with ordinary people as we did amongst ourselves. It was something that brought us together. I still remember the girls, how they did their hair, how they dressed. The girls from town were far more sophisticated. They wore makeup, which I never did. And they’d been to movies, which I never had. I think we went out of our way to be nice. But don’t put the sergeants in with that, because they could be really mean. A woman, when she gets authority, I thought, it went to her head. We weren’t allowed to wear our stockings inside out, which we loved to do, because it showed the seam. And they’d tap you and say, “Go off and change your stockings.” They could be quite nasty.

What brought me to Canada? The streets were paved with gold, or so my husband said. I met him in London at a dance after the war and we got married. We were back to reality. It was cold and you had to find a job. The adventure was over. We had three children, and he came home one night and said we’re going to Canada. Everybody has a car and they’re all different colours, and I said we don’t know anybody there. But I had an aunt in Canada. We applied and they accepted and we came on the Empress of Britain, I think it was, in 1957. We used to walk from the rooms we were in down on Jameson Ave. in Toronto and we’d stay down at Sunnyside all day with the kids.

Not of interest to anybody, I’m sure.

As told to Jim Rankin


Excerpted from the ebook Never Forget: More Stories from the Conflict Zones , by Paul Hunter and Jim Rankin. To read more, subscribe to Star Dispatches, the Toronto Star’s weekly ebook program, at stardispatches.com . Single copies of Never Forget are available for $2.99 at stardispatches.com/starstore /starstore and stardispatches.com/itunes /itunes.

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