MARY VAUGHAN

My recollections of the early part of the war are almost identical to those of my husband. Mine are of sewing sandbags to place around trenches near the school that I was at, his are of digging safety trenches. Our schools had to be shared, mine with one evacuated from Manchester, his with one from London. Lessons only took place for half a day but there was still the same syllabus to cover to prepare for Matriculation and Higher School Certificate.

Gradually friends disappeared into the Services, and once exams were over the natural progression for both of us would have been to join them. But fate stepped in and my husband, whilst waiting for his posting in the R.A.F., suddenly and very unexpectedly received a directive informing him that this was not to be allowed and that he had to report to a scientific establishment. He became involved in work that he prefers not to talk about, nor may he be at liberty to do so.

I found myself, quite by chance going in a similar direction. After going to Cambridge and undertaking a crash course in Chemistry, I entered what had always been considered to be a man's world, one that they believed to be impregnable. It took them about six weeks to get used to my presence. The work was interesting, variable and as time went on hazardous but always alleviated by camaraderie. As the work involved the handling and analysis of very sensitive materials everyone had to be very careful because any slip-ups could have been disastrous. Sometimes there were near misses. If I was transporting certain samples I had to be preceded by a man carrying a red flag, warning people to keep away.

The paths of my husband and myself finally converged, because he had been involved in his earlier assignment for the maximum time that was considered to be safe and so he was transferred to the laboratory complex in which I was working.

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His work was not in the laboratories but was concerned with manufacture. Among other things he was involved with recovery processes, the bouncing bombs, proximity devices, the safe storage of explosives in remote areas and the setting up and manufacture of marker flares for the R.A.F.

V.E. Day was marked by these flares being used as fireworks! Needless to say neither of us has ever smoked!