Section 2 of "A Book on the WAAAF"

Seven Days Leave

Redfern, Central ... A mad panic to collect greatcoat -J and kit-bag and be off the train.

Seven days leave, and Central is the most beautiful place in the world. Central with its turmoil, and noise, dirt and smoke-for it means that with luck I'll be home in twenty minutes!

A rush to the taxi rank. I'm bundled into an already full cab, and subside ungracefully on someone's knee; an Army Captain, but he doesn't mind a bit. He is on leave too, and feels just as thrilled as I. We start to talk and he offers the driver a cigarette. In two minutes we three are bosom pals-this man from the dripping jungles of New Guinea, the taxi driver who is old enough to be our father, and a tired but happy W.A.A.A.F.

(Hurry, please hurry! Doesn't he realise that every moment is precious? But I guess he does-more than twenty years ago he was probably going home on leave too.)

Moore Park Road-past the Showground with an armed guard on duty -seems strange, but there'll be no more Shows for a while ... Centennial Park with its iron railings flashes by and trams lined up, looking lonely and forlorn, waiting for tomorrow's work.

There, that's it on your right! Home, a far more welcome sight than any other I can think of. I can hardly wait while he gets my kit-bag an~ wishes me a good time.

I beat a tattoo on the door and ring the bell-dit dit dit dah, just to make sure-and there she is! Mother waiting for me as I knew she would be, as she always is, whether it is six a.m. or midnight (and I've arrived at stranger times!)

We both start talking at once, and keep talking while I run a hot bath and soak off the grime of a long train journey; and then in dressing gown and slippers sit down to a supper of all the things she knows I like.

A cigarette-and then bed, soft and warm (no straw palliasse for a week!) Still we talk, for so much has happened since last leave, until at last I'm so tired I sleep . . . But, just before I do, I thank God for home and Mother and seven days' leave!

Pucka Gen...

You understand what a W.A.A.A.F. means when she says: "Gee! I went into a flat spin when the old man tore strips off me! "

Perhaps you feel like the Frenchman who was completely lost when the Aussie said, "That cow of a horse went dog on me! "

Well, here is the Pucka gen on some W.A.A.A.F. expressions (Pucka Gen? oh, of course the good oil, or simply the gee gee!)

Flat spin-a Positive flap, or turning handsprings-oh, you know!

The old man is, of course, the C.O. -not your husband.

Tore strips off, told you off, dressed you down, put you on the mat, or gave you a good kick in the pants. In other words there was a dust up.

Think nothing of it is an extremely useful expression. It all depends on the inflexion of the voice and the expression of the face. It can mean "Forget it" (with a nonchalant air), or simply "Forget it" (but I'd wring your - neck if I had half a chance). And you can, for instance, use it as an escape from embarrassment when you have saved the life of another W.A.A.A.F. and are being thanked: "Oh, think, nothing of it!" Translation is, of course, delete all reference.

(But perhaps you take a dim view unless you prefer to call it a bad show or a very poor show - that English should use such forms?)

To continue:

Everything's tick-ety-boo, or she's apples, both mean everything's all right.

Beetling about is another way of saying stooging round.

It's a wipe-off, or I thought I could swing it both mean it's in the bag. In other words, it's a cinch.

On the other hand, I've had it (with a definite accent on had) means that you're cheesed off, browned off, or even brassed off-in fact, fed up to the teeth. You can use the expression for any object: "I've had this unit," "I've had picture shows," "these flowers have had it'~-and so on, ad lib. It's on the nose, and it smells, both mean it's no good, and it's a stinker would be found on the same page of the primer.

And what about wouldn't it?-so expressive, so simple, so useful, especially with it's W.A.A.A.F. application, V for wouldn't it?

When you feel you've been solidly bashed down by your superiors for months, you're rocked to find that after all, you've got your Corporal (stripes, not a man)!

An A.C.W. asks the corporal how to get a transfer from her unit to another, and this is what she says: "How do I go about getting a posting, Corporal? Do you know the drill?" She receives advice, puts in her application, and some days later the corporal asks her how she has fared. "Oh all washed up. I thought I'd made it too. The O.-i/c played ball, and had it all teed up, but it was scrubbed higher up. Too many bodies being posted at present it seems." (From which you are not to gather that the pastimes of a unit are golf or housekeeping, nor that we refer to stiffs when we speak of bodies in the Air Force. Far from it-the bodies are very much alive.)

If you land yourself in a mess in the Air Force, you've got into strife, or you've bought it.

Troppo is a very popular adjective, being far more expressive than screwy or simply out of order. If an A.C.W. acts peculiar, the explanation is: "It's all right, she's troppo today!" If the phone is out of order, the office orderly, sympathizing with you as you frantically try to raise a number, will say: "Don't worry, Madam, that buzzer is troppo!"

A W.A.A.A.F. refers to her overalls or jeans (airwomen for the use of) as goons or goonskins, and she will tell you that she always wears them on panic night. Such a night has nothing to do with loss of self-control or poise. It is the night, once a week, when everyone on the unit turns to, scrubs and cleans to put a spit and polish on the place for C.0's inspection next morning. Panic night is a closed camp night, and if you see an A.C.W. with bucket and broom

in hand she is off to do her panic. "Where's ACW Snooks?" "Oh, she's panicking." (On panic night we go mad with the polishing; on other nights, mad with the dancing or mad with the darning; and during working hours, mad with the files).

Scrambled eggs raises a W.A.A.A.F. mind to heights above food. In fact she begins rapidly to think how she will leap to her feet and slap up a cracker salute when an Air Force officer with gold braid on the peak of the cap comes along. "Spring to it, ACW's! "

Can you define the verb to crack? Crack, Cracker, Crackers, Cracking. "Gee, that crate'll crack up if he pulls her into the wind like that!" "I've had a cracker (or super) leave!" "Him? Oh, he's crackers (or troppo, or off his rocker)." "Come on, ACW's-it's late. Get cracking!" (in other words, get going, get on with the job).

Finally, there's the thing called the doover.

"Well, madam, you see my feet got soaking going across to the doover!" (Now where had she been-the Ops. room, the latrine, the abluts., the administrative block, the Waaafery? It's all one-any place, anywhere is the doover!)

The navigator of a plane off course or lost in cloud near one of our mainland Stations may hear a clear feminine voice directing him . . . "Your magnetic course to steer is so-and-so . . ." The owner of such a voice tells you here about the

"Moof Doof" Girls

IF you are a stranger to our Air Force station, you will probably wonder what the little hut is, with its aerial beside it, situated in the middle of a bare, flat expanse of paddocks, some distance from the aerodrome itself.

"That's the Moof Doof "hut," someone tells you. By further inquiries you may discover that "Moof Doof " is a nickname for "M/F D/F", or medium frequency direction-finding, but that probably doesn't explain much either.

Even on the station itself, few people know exactly what we "Moof Doof" girls do. They vaguely connect us with the signals personnel, and in that respect they are right, as our work is a branch of signals work, and we are telegraphists, though we had to do special training for our job.

To understand what we do, you should come over and visit us one day -when there's no flying in our vicinity, as then we have less work. For our job consists of communicating in Morse or speech (radio- telephony) with the wireless operators of aeroplanes, and giving them bearings when they ask for them. A bearing is a plane's direction in degrees from our D/F hut, with respect to true North. These bearings are used by navigators in plotting and checking their positions, so they must be very accurate, as an incorrect bearing may mislead the navigator in his calculations and put the plane off course.

The first thing that catches your eye as you walk into the hut is the special radio equipment on which we receive signals and take bearings. To you it seems a bewildering array of knobs and dials, but to us long practice has made it as familiar as the ordinary household wireless set. One of the things we learned during our training was the working of this set of ours and the function of every knob. We have been taught how to detect the fault, if anything goes wrong, and if it is only a minor defect, we can repair it ourselves instead of summoning the assistance of a wireless mechanic.

You notice that there is only one of us on duty at a time. You must think we lead a lonely life, and so we do, but we rather pride ourselves on our independence. We are on watch alone at night as well as in the daytime, so it does not do for us to be timid. There are three things to give us a feeling of security-our telephone, the revolver lying ready just in case, and the regular visits we receive from the guard on his patrol and the orderly officer on his round of inspection.

Visitors make a welcome break at night, and are generally pressed to stay for supper. For the rarer visitor who drops in during the daytime, we keep a well-stocked larder, as when we are on duty we eat our meals in the hut instead of at the mess. Hence we soon become expert at cooking-within a limited range, for the many conveniences we are provided with do not include an oven. But it's surprising what results can be obtained with an electric griller!

Being on watch alone, we are more or less our own masters, but that means, too, that we have only ourselves to rely on when conditions are bad. If static and interference make communication difficult, we have no one to call to for assistance. We must remain calm and unflustered, and try to make our work as efficient as under normal conditions.

Direction-finding is often a very monotonous job. When there are no planes up in our vicinity, we may listen for hours without receiving a signal. Under ordinary conditions, the majority of bearings we give are "for exercise"-that is, they are required merely to assist the navigator in plotting and checking his position.

However, now and then comes the occasion on which D/F really proves its worth. A plane which is lost and flying blind through bad weather sends out an urgent call to our station for a bearing to set it on its course. Then we need all our skill for on the accuracy of the bearing we give may depend the safety of the plane and its crew. Sometimes, too, we have the even more responsible and exciting task of directing a plane through dense cloud to land on the aerodrome nearby.

The knowledge that our bearings have saved a plane from destruction by setting it on its course, or guiding it to land safely, is the greatest thrill we "Moof Doof " girls can experience. It is then we feel that the months of training and the lonely watches have not been in vain-that we have justified our existence as direction-finding operators.

Life on a Country Station

Life, to a civilian, can be what you choose to make it, and the same applies to a member of the Services. You can be happy or unhappy -it's up to you alone. I have been happy in all my period of service.

Every hour of the day has a picture of its own, and every part of this big sprawling station holds memories or new contacts, all of which go to make up as a whole, a pleasant life in the Service.

~ Each day goes by in much the same manner. There are parades in the morning, when the mists are still hanging low, shrouding all the buildings with a fairy atmosphere, and magpies, full-throated with the loveliness of the day to come, are swooping around the gum-trees under which our huts are clustered.

Tall brown men, in flying boots, stride across the tarmac, and busy maintenance men crawl like ants over an unheeding aircraft. There are men with goggles and wireless gear; men, and girls too, with spanners in their hands; white-clad cooks flitting in and out of the messes; and tenders, staff cars and service buses forever loading and unloading human freight and Stores, and forever going somewhere or coming back.

Aircraft, standing line upon line outside the hangars and along the runways, await maintenance or flying crews; and aircraft in the cloudless blue sky glint in the sun-making a constant hum that is noticeable only when it stops altogether.

Long summer days of hazy heat, shimmering across the paddocks that slowly change from green to the warm gold of hay awaiting the reaper and binder-the blue hills in the background, now softly blue, now clear cut against a darker background of steel-grey clouds. The farmhouse nearby, that can be seen from the hangar where we work, nestling among a grove of tall trees, the red roof showing faintly and a trail of smoke reminding us that life goes on elsewhere, too, but in a different manner.

Days, too, of hot, searing winds, with bushfires crawling nearer; long breathless nights with thick smoke and flying cinders, and the fires glowing in the near distance, like the angry eyes of beasts awaiting the kill. There are tired, fire-blackened men coming in from fire-fighting, and weary mess-women and cooks forever preparing food for them, far into the night and on until breakfast-time.

Then there is night-flying, and the constant roar as the planes turn and bank, and glide down to the flare-paths twinkling like giant glow-worms far below. Searchlights probe the darkness and turn the sky 'into a giant cobweb with a plane like a white fly caught in its mesh.

Nights of "working back", doing rush repair jobs in the unaccustomed glow of the electric light, and the more-than-welcome sound of the knock-off bell echoing through the vast hangars. There is the lighter side, when work is put away-P.T. and sports hours, held on the great flat expanses of grass
-rowing down the nearby river, the eights and fours passing with a combined swish of blades and clicks of riggers, and a gentle breeze moving the sugar-gums and willows that crowd like thirsty cattle down to the edge of the river-pulling up-stream with the hot sun on your back, then turning
back to the shed, with the sun in your face and the light reflected on the surface of the water.

Sailing on the lake, a few miles away, with a tearing wind and cold spray wetting the sheet, boat,
you and everything else-steak suppers on the shore, and bumpy rides back to the barracks in the tender-dances in the gym. with everyone brushed and polished up, almost unrecognizably, and the pleasant realisation that each one is a friend or a workmate.

Church parades on the oval, with the sound of many voices singing a hymn, which goes rolling over the fields with the sweetness given to singing in the open air-the padre's gown blowing gently in the breeze, and rows of brown f aces lifted in the early morning sun.

There are cosy talks by the barracks stove with the W.A.A.A.F. officer, and arguments, debates, pillow-fights, and gossip, so important to a girl's life anywhere.

There is sympathy and understanding, given unreservedly by so many around you when trouble or unhappiness walk your particular path.

But there's no time to dwell on these things; so you live for the day, for the hour sometimes, and making that hour happy ultimately makes the day happy -and "tomorrow is always another day."

The Shift Worker at Work and play

LAST NIGHT as I lay in bed I thought I would write a few words about the W.A.A.A.F. of my section; but now that I am sitting here with WAAAF of various sizes and shapes all round me, it doesn't seem so easy.

And that is, perhaps, one of the most outstanding characteristics of WAAAF in general, and shift workers in particular-that they are, I mean, all round you, all the time.

You sit down on your bed, open a book, and forget that there is a corrugated iron wall behind you and beds on either side and in front, receding into the middle distance. You are alone.

But not for long. Pretty soon a voice (apparently disembodied until you discover that it comes from a mound of blankets on your left), asks: "What's the time?" or even if it's raining. Or a heavy tread, laboriously and unsuccessfully hushed because there are people sleeping, sounds from the end of the hut.

But they do differ from civilian girls in this that the effect is far more concentrated. And this is not entirely restful. With a very few exceptions - and these are probably regarded by the rest as slightly queer - we seem to experience no desire for rest, quiet, or tranquility. We live in a continual hubbub, a spate of conversation, of going to pictures, or to dances, sandwiched between frequent bouts of clothes washing and ironing. Letters home are written at top speed; books, chiefly novels, are read at one indigestible gulp. And for the rest, we find numerous small activities to claim our attention. These activities carried on in our hut are muted, it is true, for the benefit of sleepers, but are none the less intense for that.

Possibly you have wondered whether our hut is some sort of convalescent home, as I seem continually to be referring to sleeping bodies. This is not so. In a hut full of shift workers it Is very rarely that there are not at least two comatose forms. This means that the rest of us acquire a kind of ostrich gait from walking habitually on our toes, and hoarse, confidential tones of voice from speaking perpetually in a strained whisper. One might think that the necessity for quiet would instil into each tumultuous Waaafish bosom some element of repose. But it is not so. It serves merely to damp down the fires of vocal and physical energy, with consequent eruptions all the more violent for their temporary restraint.

Another characteristic which, I think, is peculiarly our own is an ungovernable tendency to talk shop. The hushed tumult of the off-duty shift returning to the hut will give place to a sudden feverish whispering. "So I imiried him again and he came up with exactly the same signal as before. Oh, those Wags! " Or "I'm sorry, sir, I said, but the line is engaged, and if you were the Angel Gabriel I couldn't get it for you any quicker." And so on, for anything up to an hour. Incidents are retold, rehashed, refurbished) reborn almost, time and time again, until they assume the standing of a tradition.

Up to now I have talked principally of the shift worker at play. There is also the shif t worker at work.

Three times in every twenty-f our hours you will see (if you come and stand at the main gate of our station) a little group of peop le marching, if it is day time, stragg ling if it is night, down the road
towards the signals office.

Each has a highly important and confidential-looking brief case under her arm.

Shift workers' brief cases, however, contain books, writing pads, half -embroidered tea cloths, half -darned stockings, fruit, chocolate, cigarettes - anything, in fact, except important documents or briefs. I once saw an electric iron in a brief case ... So much for the shift worker en route.

Once in the office (and here I must confine myself to telegraphists), a scene of enormous activity ensues.