“Actually I’d meant to join the FANY. First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Because in the FANY there was a chance I’d get a motor bike.”
These are are the opening words of Mabel Langland’s booklet Nihil Illegitimi Carborundum, about her time in the WAAF during the war, who worked in the Ops Room and rose to the rank of Leading Aircraftwoman (LACW).
Mabel’s son, Gordon, who lives in Wormit, takes up the story.
“I encouraged her to write her memories of her time in the WAAF to give her something to do when she was in her 80s,” he recalls.
“She had been a journalist much of her working life and liked nothing better than sitting at her typewriter writing.”
Mabel was born in Dundee in 1922 and her dad Henry Wilson was a baker, and had also been bowling champion of Forfarshire in 1913. Her mum Flora had a sweetie shop for a short time.
“Mabel was a journalist with DC Thomson and that’s also where she met my father Martin, who was leader writer for The Courier from the 1950s until he retired in 1984,” says Gordon.
Mabel was enlisted with the WAAF on April 1 and demobbed in 1945.
As a surprise for her 90th birthday, the family had her WAAF stories published as a small booklet for distribution among family and friends. The title, Nihil Illegitimi Carborundum (Don’t let the b******s grind you down), was the unofficial motto of the Ops Room.
“She was delighted with it although she hadn’t intended it to be seen by others,” says Gordon. “But she was really chuffed that everyone who has read it said how funny and gripping it is.”
In 2012 Mabel was invited to an event in Tealing to commemorate the Russian minister Molotov’s secret wartime arrival at Tealing in 1942.
“Mum actually plotted Molotov’s plane in and was invited to the event as guest of honour,” says Gordon.
Sadly Mabel died in July 2015 aged 93 but Gordon and brother Martin are glad they have the booklet to remember her by.
“Mum was a real character with a lively –- and sometimes wicked– sense of humour, and her personality comes out in the book.”
WAAF adventures: excerpts from Mabel’s book
“Turnhouse: The Ops Room wasn’t on the airfield – we were in abig house up a street near Murrayfield Road opposite the rugby ground where we were marched across to do drill. A male sergant used the phrase ‘bloody ballet dancers.’ I think it was all part of their training.”
“It was at Tealing I had my proudest moment – well, an hour actually. I, LACW Wilson, single-handed, flew a Dominie.”
“Dancing was my passion and very nearly my undoing! We’d all been confined to camp for 48 hours but I had a date at thePalais in Dundee that night. Things were going very well as we twirled around until I espied Sgt Frank Smith to whom, apparently, the confinement to camp didn’t apply.”
“In the cookhouse it amused the airmen in the queue to bang on the counter and send the cockroaches scurrying out towards the waiting WAAF who dropped their plates and ran, thus allowing them to move up the queue.”
“It was from Lincoln that I was finally demobbed. After that it was a bit of a blur until I found myself, tears in my eyes, looking at Dundee from the train crossing the bridge. The sight of Dundee with the Law and jute mill chimneys was something I’ll never forget. A ‘welcome back’ blast from the bummers wouldn’t have gone amiss. But no matter. I was home.”
clindsay@thecourier.co.uk