Bluebird Learns TO FLY

Everyone had to do their bit, but would Marion find the sense of purpose she desperately craved?

Marion took her WAAF jacket off and laid it carefully on the bunk in front of her. She had chosen that one because it was by the window with the best light for doing her hair. She tucked her blue blouse into her handmade uniform skirt.

She was the first to arrive at the barracks at Innsworth, in Gloucestershire, for the induction course into the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force – with its nickname of the Bluebirds – and the Nissen hut rang with every step of her heavy, shiny brogues.

Marion put her hand on the mattress. It was hard and bristly and she quickly withdrew her manicured fingers. Then she looked again at the mattress. It had moved a few inches, leaving the metal springs underneath exposed. There were two other identical bits of mattress at either end of it.

‘These must be the things they call “biscuits“,’ she said to the empty room in her received-pronunciation English.

Marion made a mental note to send home a list of essentials that she was going to need from the large linen cupboard in the west wing: a sheet, a soft blanket, and… she tested the pillow… a pillow that was not made of straw.

The door opened and two girls came in. Marion assumed the rather superior manner she had adopted from her first day at boarding school, aged five.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said loudly, assessing the inferior cloth of the standard-issue uniforms the two girls were wearing. One girl was tall with honey-blonde hair that shone in the reflection of the sunshine that was flooding through the high window behind her.

Marion immediately recognised the swagger that came from the confidence that life was a game this girl was going to win. The other was a smaller girl who looked nervously around her.