“Never in a million years did we think we would ever come back.”
It was a real trip down memory lane as lifelong friends Jenny Parker & Pat Toohie made an emotional return to RAF High Wycombe after fifty-nine years to relive the memories they had shared as teenagers.
Since the age of thirteen Jenny had wanted to join the RAF. In 1965 at aged eighteen, Jenny was granted her wish. She left the tight knit village of Hathersage in the Derbyshire Dales - “I felt independent with new adventures ahead!” said the former stewardess - and signed up as an Aircrafts Woman (ACW) before attending RAF Spitalgate (now an Army barracks) in Lincolnshire for basic training. “Depending on the trade you chose determined where you were sent after that. I wanted the Nursing Corps but my education was not good enough,” said Jenny. “At the time they were desperate for stewards and stewardesses, so that is what I became….we were glorified waitresses, really,” laughed Jenny. An eight-week intensive course at a catering school in Hereford followed where you were taught everything from laying a table correctly to dining etiquette. Her first posting was RAF High Wycombe.
(left image, Mission Huts. Right image, Officer's Mess)
Cambridgeshire based Jenny and Birmingham based Pat both decided to rekindle memories of a site that held so many happy experiences. “It was like coming home,” said a tearful Jenny as they entered the Officer’s Mess on 2 Site. The Mess brought back a flood of memories. “I can’t breathe….I am just so emotional. It is like my heart has been ripped out. I am so happy,” cried Jenny. The Main Hall of the Mess had not changed according to the plucky duo, except the tables were smaller. “The soul is still here in a way,” reflected Pat.
“I can’t believe I am here. It really is going to be like a dream when I get home.”
RAF High Wycombe veteran and former mess manager, Dave Brown was on hand to ladle out the banter and share memories of times long ago including dining in nights and shenanigans in the kitchens. “We used to work twenty-four to forty-eight hours with no sleep,” recalled Jenny. “No matter who passed you, you had to stand to attention. It was a very strict time!” Pat, who served for a year in the Air Force before marrying a fellow steward summed up her time at High Wycombe; “There were so many laughs, that’s all I remember from my time in the Air force! It put you in good stead for life. The camaraderie was amazing. We always looked after each other’s backs, and you had to mature very fast back then.”
Jenny has fond recollections of being the only person from RAF High Wycombe to be selected one year to go to the Queen Mother’s Garden Party and to the Prime Minister’s country home, Chequers where incumbent Prime Minster, Harold Wilson was entertaining a delegation from India. “I had to iron a beautiful sari for one of the ladies,” said Jenny, laughing. The happy-go-lucky former stewardess who spent much of her later career in the property industry, recalls the time she was demobbed in 1969; “I was hoisted into a sink in the kitchen and covered in flour. The staff threw all sorts of stuff at me, then they hosed me down with a hose pipe!” Of course, nothing like that would ever happen in this day and age! Pat was demobbed in 1967.
“My eighteen-year-old self is stood next to me. She is walking with me all the time I am here.”
The ladies were treated to lunch in the Warrant Officer’s & Sergeant’s Mess before being introduced to two serving ladies of the RAF, our SWO, Mrs Ward and Corporal Pring where the uniforms were examined. Apparently, they were very similar to those of the 1960s....except nowadays female personnel are not required to wear blue bloomers!
After some photographs were taken and new memories made, the ladies were given a cheery farewell.
