Nellie Remembers
Nellie at Victoria Library
I volunteered and became a WAAF
By Nellie Hall
I lost my home in February 1941, because we were bombed out. My parents and I had two nights when they stood us up in Hyde Park Corner so I volunteered and passed to go into the WAAFs (Women's Auxiliary Air Force). My parents had friends in Chertsey, so we moved down there. Then I got my calling up papers to go to Gloucester, Innsworth to be kitted out and to learn how to march and get your injection and so forth.
My mother came with me to Chertsey Station. She came with me to Virginia Water and the next stop was New Reading and I think she’d have come on further but the officers on the train that pulled in realised that my mother didn’t want to let her girl go so they said “We’ll look after her” which they did.
I got my posting. That’s when I thought I was going to see the world. But my posting was back here in King Charles Street, Whitehall. So I ended up there from 1941 to the end of the war. My first base was Portman Square, Marble Arch.