in the WAAF

left -Ada Brown, Norma (Zelda's sister), Gerry and Zelda in 1944

right - zelda, third from left, back row, in the WAAF



It was the end of August 1945 when i left the WAAF, soon after VJ Day, the official end f the war. Thanking me for my service to the country, the officer handed me my demob papers and added "we're so glad you could be with us right to the last". What a laugh that was, considering my service record.
When I joined the WAAF in November 1943, I had been a member of the Communist Party for one year. I was sent to Wilmslow Camp for the usual three weeks of square bashing (training they liked to call it)., but before the first week was over, I was called up before the commanding officer, who sat at his large desk and without even looking up, informed me "We know who you are, we know what you are, watch it"!
I quite enjoyed the drill, though it was terribly cold standing around on that huge square. It was even colder in the nissen huts in which we slept, 20 to a dormitory backed by an ablutions hut with a row of washbasins, showers and toilets. There was one central stove that we had to keep stoked up, cleaned out and blackleaded, but it rarely rewarded us with sufficient warmth.
Each night at lights out we woul start singing softly to keep our spirits up. Scottish songs like Annie Laurie and Bonnie Prince Charlie were favourites, with old music hall numbers of Marie Lloyd a close second. But whatever we sang, and however loudly, one could always hear the sad sound of sobbing from some of the women. They were so homesick and scared.
As we approached the third and last week of training, I was called up before the CO again. "i hear you have some experience of the stage" he announced, again not looking me in the eye. "You'd btter organise the camp concert as a farewell". That was no suggestion, that was an order. I was terribly nervous, worrying that I wouldn't be up to the job. But everyone rallied round and we put on such a good show that I was highly commended by the CO.
It did not save me from the dreadful posting they had planned for us. We were sent to a bleak camp at Henlow, Bedfordshire, where we were employed in soldering hundreds of colour-coded wires to their proper place in the radio circuit. Boring, boring! The cookhouse and dining hall were a ten minute run from the workshop and with only an hour alowed for our lunch break i do mean run. My first introduction to what they laughingly called a meal there was picking up a plate from the pile and seeing huge cockroaches running across the plate beneath. Even worse, when it was my turn to peel the potatoes i found mice nesting in the sacks. And it was not until after we had eate it was discovered that the beef was actually horsemeat.
We stayed there only until january and then, having undergone an intelligence test, eight of us were chosen to go to Edinburgh for a course at the university. At that time with radar in its early days they needed more people able to build and repair the equipment, so we were sent to Herriot Watt college for an electrical engineering course. Normally it would have taken 3 years to attain a BSc, but we had to do a condensed intensive course in just one and a half years. it was so intense and there was so much to learn on top of carrying out other duties required of us, that some of the women dropped out, defeated by the task. Two of them had mental breakdowns and another suffered a phantom pregnancy.
I enjoyed Edinburgh, if not the course. We made friends with some of the civilian students even though it was forbidden for us to fraternise. We were supposed to be inn bed with lights out by 10.30pm but we used to bunk out about 9 to go dancing, laving one or two behind to cover for us in case there was an unexpected visit fro an officer. Around 1 am we would climb back in through the side windows. if discovered, and this happened on two occasions only, we were given extra duties and loss of leave as punishment. The extra duties were usually cleanig out the lavatories.
There was but one other jewish woman in our group and we were easy targets for the anti=semitism rife among officers. not a day went by without Celia or i suffering some abuse and not only from our own women officers. There was a male sargeant who took us for square bashing every Saturday morning in the main square of the city. He was always picking on me and humiliating me in front of the people of Edinburgh who turned out to watch us being drilled. in the April of 1944, when I married Jerry, my name changed overnight from Brown to Kutchinsky. [It was changed to Curtis by deed poll by the whole Kutchinsky family after the war]. What a field day the sergeant had with that name at the next drill session! I comforted myself by going AWOL to hop off to the Lyceum theatre where Bill Owen (previously Bill Rowbotham of Unity Theatre) was in a play with Alastair Sims. We had a few drinks together after the show but I paid for the pleasure when I returned to college the next day. They put me on ablutions duty cleaning out the lavatories.
In June 1944 my father died and the fact that my mother was then alone in London in the midst of bombing raids, gave me good reason to approach the authorities for a compassionate posting to London. In actual fact i was sent to Woolwich to continue my electrical engineering course at the poly and was billeted at Eltham. There i met Arthur and Ken, two RAF lads. They were both in the Communist Party and together we turned the common room at the Poly into a hotbed of political argument. Once the theory exams were over at the Poly they posted us to Cranwell for a six month practical course. I hated it. None of the women I knew were there. However, I got involved with a group of Jewish pilots for whom I felt great sympathy. They faced danger with courage, but they felt the need for religious support. it was decided to turn an unused hut into a synagogue for them and i worked with them to clean it up, paint it and furnish it. Then we invited the Chief Services Rabbi to consecrate it and set the Ark in its place. How strange that I , an atheist and a woman, should have Rabbi Brodie thank me personally and allow me to play a part in the celebration of the opening of the synagogue.
Hating both the course and Cranwell as much as I did I tried to get out of them. I aplied to become an officer, but a woman officer told me that my application would be turned down. "After the Air Force has put all this money into training you to do such a specialist job, do you think they're going to let you become an officer when you would not have to do the work?" So i played the compassionate posting card again and mum backed me up. they posted me to a camp in Bushey Park near Kingston. From there, whenever i could, I used to rsh up to London to work at Unity Theatre. I can remember times when on that journey from Kingston to Waterloo the train would be stopped two or three times because of bombs ahead, and I was on the last train to get through Lewisham before the terrible bombing of its Woolworths when scores of people died - one of the worst raids of the war.