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Oral History Recording ORAL HISTORY RECORDING ACCESSION NUMBER: S00162 TITLE: DAME MARGARET BLACKWOOD, WOMEN'S AUXILIARY AUSTRALIAN AIR FORCE. INTERVIEWEE: DAME MARGARET BLACKWOOD INTERVIEWER: RECORDING DATE: 28 MAY 1984 RECORDING LOCATION: PARKVILLE, VICTORIA SUMMARY: DAME MARGARET'S EXPERIENCES IN THE WAAAF AS DRILL INSTRUCTOR AND IN SIGNALS, AND AS COMMANDING OFFICER OF NUMBER 1 WAAAF TRAINING DEPOT DURING WORLD WAR II; RETURN TO CIVILIAN LIFE AFTER WAR. TRANSCRIBER: CHRISTOPHER SOAMES TRANSCRIPTION DATE: SEPTEMBER 1995 START OF TAPE ONE - SIDE A Identification: Margaret Blackwood, Parkville, Victoria; Monday, 28 May, 1984. Dame Margaret, you served with the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force, for just on five years during World War II. When you joined the ranks as a drill instructor, on 15 March 1941, you already held an MSc; could you describe, please, your background and how it led to your enrolment in the WAAAF? I was very fortunate in my background; in my family background I had very liberal minded parents who were interested in education; that was the primary object of their lives, to give we three children a good education. And so we were sent to very good schools, and we were very fortunate to be well educated, and this has been the pattern of my life. The boys automatically were to go to the university. Curiously enough, my father - who was a very enlightened man, and some of his best students were women - just didn't think the university was a place for women, and so I was to stay at home and help my mother. We'd have killed each other of course, but still, I was to stay at home and help her. But my father died while I was still at school, and so I had to earn my own living, and after doing a teacher's training course I entered the university and had a very full life - but not a very successful academic one at first - and eventually I got a BSc - after going back to teaching for a while too - and then did an MSc, and was asked to stay on as a research person in the university. Now, just about this time war broke out - and I suppose all the young men that I knew were enlisting, but even more so, I had a friend who's brothers had - two of them had been in the First World War, and three of them had enlisted in the Second World War - and she felt that I was young and vigorous, and that I should do something for my country in this way. And so I somehow - I don't remember how - but I joined the Women's Air Training Corps, which was a group of women who were practising, first of all, their main object was to practice wireless telegraphy so that they could get up to thirty words a minute and be eligible for the air force - if ever women came into the air force - and they drilled too. I soon got behind in the WT, but spent a lot of time learning drill from a book. 1 So, when eventually the WAAAF did start, the person in charge of the WATC, Mrs Bell, invited me to be interviewed for officership. And so along I went, and I was interviewed by three people - three notable people - Wing Commander Radford, Wing Commander Tunbridge, and Mrs Williamson who was a National Council of Women president at the time. Well, some little while afterwards I got a letter from the secretary for air telling me that I didn't have officer qualities, and that if I wished I could go in through the ranks and perhaps could apply for officer status later. Well, this was quite a crisis for me because I had persuaded the University of Melbourne that I would be much more use in the air force than doing research in the university, and so having had a fight to be allowed to go - although actually we had to resign: we weren't given leave, we had to resign at that stage - but it would have been rather difficult to go back and say, Give me my job again - and so I went into the ranks. Now, this was on the first intake, and when I looked at the musterings that were required: cooks - and I couldn't cook anything except a boiled egg - typists, stenographers, they were beyond me too. I realised they'd have to have one NCO, a drill instructor, to look after them. So I got hold of the book and I learned it up, and I did a trade test and I got fifty-one per cent. So I came in as the drill instructor, the lowest of the musterings, Grade 5. And so, as the numbers were in order of the grades of musterings, mine was the last, 90017 - there were eighteen of us from 90000 to 90017 - and I was at the bottom of this list because my mustering was so low. Well, it took them all day at the recruiting depot to inspect us medically. The forms they used, of course, were men's forms so our tummies were measured to see whether we (laughs) were pot-bellied, our feet were inspected with great gusto, we were given the colour blind test as for flying personnel, and all sorts of curious questions were asked. And by the end of that Saturday we were all enroled - not enlisted, but enroled - in the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force. 2 Were you enroled at Mayfield Avenue or at a recruit centre? Oh, we were enroled at a recruit centre. And then they discovered that there was no straw for the palliasses and, in fact, no beds to sleep on, and so we were given the weekend of leave. And off we all went and we had to report at 8 o'clock on Monday morning. I remember I was terrified of being late so I got a taxi out to the Number 1 WAAAF Depot in Mayfield Avenue, Toorak. And within two hours there came a signal through to the unit that ACW Blackwood, M, was to be promoted to a temporary acting unpaid corporal (laughs). So that's how I became an NCO, and my great sorrow was that because we had no uniforms I never wore those two stripes. However, that's how we came in. Now, we were all in this school building, and the poor drill instructor, being the only NCO, had to be up before everybody else and wake them up at a quarter to six, organise them through the shower - we only had one shower and it was in the bath, and you had to put your feet in pot(assium) permanganate to keep away tinea. So it was a case of like drafting sheep through a race, I drafted them all through the bath, and this was really quite ... And the officers out at the depot, they didn't know what was going on, you see, so they would say, 'Corporal, what do we do about so and so?' and so quite accidentally a lot of the fundamental rules of the WAAAF were laid down in those days by the temporary unpaid acting corporal. This was most exciting, and we had lectures from a flight sergeant RAAF. And on the Thursday we were dressed in men's boiler suits and blue berets. The arms of the boiler suits were far too - the sleeves - were far too long for anybody, and they were very, very difficult things to get on and off in moments of stress, and very curious results occurred as a consequence. But our very first lecture, I remember, we were all there, all agog, to listen to what the flight sergeant had to say; and he stood there and he said, 'Now, then, this 'ere WAAAF, it aint a matrimonial bureau'. That was actually our first opening gambit for our course about the air force. He went on to help us considerably, but he also, of course, taught me to be a drill instructor; and he taught me all kinds of little things, and one thing was to use what he 3 called a 'tickler'. Now, this was a piece of cardboard that fitted into your left hand, and you held your hand down by your side and you looked down for the orders - you wrote the orders down there before so that you wouldn't forget them. But what he didn't realise, of course, was that most women, and especially me, can't look over their bosoms down to their left hand by their side (laughs), so it was virtually useless as far as I was concerned. However, it showed willingness. And I always remember the first meal we had. We all lined up, absolutely starving - we'd been on the drill square for hours it seemed to us - and we lined up and we got our plate of food and we sat down to eat it. And there was an ACW Dalton sitting opposite to me, and she polished off everything on her plate, and somebody said, 'Those swedes were nice', and she grasped her throat and she said, 'Swedes! swedes! I've never eaten swedes in my life', and there she'd swallowed the lot. So it just shows you how hungry we got on the drill square. We spent a lot of time on the drill square, and it was very exciting and we made great friendships. And those original WAAAF, just recently at the reunion - fourteen of us - got together, and I think that's quite remarkable because two of them had died and the other one who didn't come was interstate.
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