‘Everybody was kissing everybody else – today you wouldn’t dream of doing that’

JOAN HALL / 95 / FORMER WRAF

I was 17 when I joined up with the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF). You needed your parents’ permission at that age and my father warned me that once I signed that bit of paper there was no getting out. He told me to sleep on it. I did – and wanted to join up just as badly the next morning.

That was in 1942. We were sent for training in Morecambe Bay. All the male recruits were trained in Blackpool. They wanted to keep us apart so we didn’t fraternise too much, and with 10 shillings a week pay we couldn’t afford the trip very often.

I was sent to Coastal Command Headquarters in RAF Northwood, Hertfordshire, and my duties were serving in the officer’s mess. On our days off we would go into London – it was only tuppence on the train to Baker Street. My favourite nightclub was the Astoria in Tottenham Court Road. We used to jitterbug to Glenn Miller songs. We always wore uniform with flat black shoes and thick nylon stockings that we used to nickname ‘passion killers’.

We never spoke about the war. We went out to enjoy ourselves and have a drink. Whisky and lemonade was my favourite, although I always made sure I would sit by a plant in the bar so when I had had enough I could secretly pour it away. One night I met an American soldier. I started going out with him because I smoked and he didn’t so I could get his rations of Camel and Lucky Strike, but eventually we became engaged.

We’d take the Underground to get the last train back to base and there were always lots of people streaming in who were going to stay there all night.

I was lucky on VE Day as I had a day off and was allowed to go into London with a friend. By the time we got to Trafalgar Square we couldn’t even move. I had never seen so many happy people in my life. I lost count of the people I danced with. They all looked the same eventually. Everybody was kissing everybody else – today you wouldn’t dream of doing that.

After the war I moved back to my home city of Birmingham and started working in the record department of Lewis’s department store. My American fiancé had returned to the US and sent me the money for my boat fare to go and marry him. But before I could travel, a man came into Lewis’s one day asking for a record by Spike Jones and his City Slickers. We didn’t have it in stock and he kept coming back. Eventually he asked me out for coffee and that was it. I sent the money back to the American and Dennis and I got together. We were married for 63 years before he died eight years ago.

Top Hall during the war in her WRAF uniform, which she had to wear even at nightclubs