Irene Peggy Mowat Herridge

Europe is very close. It’s like living with your next door neighbour and we’d only just gone over the First World War. Don’t forget, we never, we hadn’t even got over that yet. There were still shortages, there was still people dying. When Gone With the Wind was made, they showed it for the first time in the show in Liverpool and we’d been on guard all night long but we decided we were going to see that. So we hiked into Liverpool, bought our tickets, went to see the show and fell asleep and never did see the show. Yes. Mind you, we all stood together then, there was 12 girls in the crew and one, the boss. And we all stood together. We used to go home with each other and borrow each other’s stuff. If somebody was going to go and go home for a weekend, we’d save our rations and make sure they had enough food to take home to keep them for the weekend and their family. And it was people at their best. Okay. Everybody was in the same boat and you looked after each other. And when they got married, we’d borrow, beg, and steal and make sure they all had a good wedding. Borrow here, borrow there, borrow from somebody else, food that you couldn’t eat because it was made from erzatz [substitute]stuff that never tasted good. Just a few people getting together because the rest of them were scattered and it was a very small church wedding and as I said, everybody was gone. His pilot was supposed to give us away but his pilot did manage to make it and then we went to Scotland and stood all night on the train from London to Edinborough because there was no seats. No, that was a borrowed one [Mrs. Mowat's wedding dress], it had to go back. It was one that I believe, it was about an 1890 dress that a friend of mine had, mother had found and she’d sewed all the holes up with pearls and pearl necklaces and then anybody that got married could borrow it for the day. But when you took it off, it went back to where it came from, ready for the next one. After the war was over, I went over to Normandy in the nose of a bomber and oh, it was gorgeous, going over the sea like that. And I went around the Eiffel tower, we flew around the Eiffel tower and it was an awful mess. It was a rusting thing, oh, terrible. And then we went over the Champs-Élysées and we went up as far as Rouen and saw the big cathedral up there. And then we ran out of gas and had to go home.