In this interview Judy recalls joining the WRAC as a way to begin her career and move out of her family home. Judy completed her initial basic training at Lingfield, which was the predecessor of Guildford, before she was posted to Worthy Down to specialise as a pay clerk in the Royal Army Pay Corps. Reflecting on her training, Judy remembers being amazed at how quickly she transformed from a young girl into an adult woman. She also describes the experience of working with fast-changing technology, and how later in her life she realised how instrumental her work in data processing became with the arrival of the first computerised consensus. Later, Judy was posted to Aden and remembers the excitement of flying over the pyramids. Here she was taken to the Singapore lines where she worked with the binary code. When asked to reflect on the WRAC, Judy felt frustrated by the lack of options made available to women at the time but also extremely proud of the work she had done.

Tony Martin shares his memories as a member of the Royal Pioneer Corps, initially carrying out the dirty job of setting up smoke screens to protect British cities and factories from German bombers during WW2. However, he is soon reallocated to the advanced airfield construction groups in preparation for D-Day.  Tony describes the relentless work of setting up crash strips for damaged planes and maintaining airfields in France, including how they set up a fully operational airstrip in record time. He shares the thrill of the frenzied crash strips, as spitfires, hurricanes and bombers “belly flopped” onto the runway. Tony also, however, reveals the danger and horror of the airstrips, as men dropped from burning planes thousands of feet above and they themselves became the target of German bombs, resulting in the loss of a close friend. After those initial months of the invasion, Tony was sent out to the Far East and he transferred to the military police in India. Tony’s interview is a stark reminder of the bravery and essential support work that the Royal Pioneer Corps carried out in WW2.

As a child Margaret travelled around the world with her father who was in the Royal Navy, therefore when she settled in England, joined the WRAC as a means of continuing her travels. Margaret joined in 1975, and as the first intake of army recruits after the Guildford bomb, she described the unnerving atmosphere and extreme safety precautions that were at place during her first six weeks of training. Having previously trained as a hairdresser, Margaret continued this trade and was quickly posted to Northern Ireland where she ran her own hairdressers in Aldergrove. She describes the horror of the bombings, shootings and overall violence in Ireland and her experience with PTSD following this posting. When asked to reflect on the WRAC, Margaret states that although she enjoyed the confidence being in the military gave her, she felt resentment towards the manner in which her career was so easily terminated as a result of pregnancy.