War mechanics share memories
Anzac Day will be a low-key affair for Temuka couple Alf and Hazel Peacock who met and fell in love at the end of World War II.
Hazel, 92, is the town’s only surviving WWII service woman and a former motor transport mechanic. For five years she was based at Church Fenton, near Yorkshire at the Royal Air Force Fighter Command.
She served in the Balloon Command, Air Sea Rescue ‘‘taking over from the men who were drafted overseas’’.
She said in those days there was no sexism in the work place.
‘‘We were all mates together . . . we all worked together.’’
Hazel said back then ‘‘engines were just basic’’ and they would check ‘‘anything that had a engine in it’’.
‘‘We would fix every moving part’’.
Hazel and Alf first crossed paths when they were in hospital in North Ellerton.
Also aged 92, Alf was in hospital being treated for a badly sprained ankle while Hazel was having polyps nose surgery.
Alf said he spotted his wife-to-be having a cup of tea in the hospital canteen and thought he had to ask her where he had seen her before.
‘‘It was all on from then,’’ he said.
Alf was also based in Church Fenton as a Royal Air Force flight mechanic.
Next month the couple will celebrate their 69th wedding anniversary.
Hazel said while working at Church Fenton she had got to know Alf’s airforce buddies quiet well.
‘‘I was one of the gang’’ and even though most of them had passed away now she still sent a Christmas card back to their wives each year, she said.
Originally from England, the couple decided to move to New Zealand in 1953 because they were ‘‘sick of rationing’’.
‘‘We had never seen a piece of fruit in years,’’ Hazel said.
The couple settled in Dunedin where Alf got a job with the council and Hazel worked for a sewing company.
She said she would have ‘‘loved’’ to have found work in a spare parts shed, however, employers ‘‘didn’t want to know’’ of her previous work.
The couple have two sons and seven grandchildren and in 1984 shifted to Temuka to retire.
Temuka RSA head of remembrance Kay Donaldson said Hazel was the town’s only WWII service woman.
While the couple have attended war memorial services in the past, they planned to watch the commemorations on television.