Opal by Living Gems centenarian and one of the original founding members of the Logan Village RSL, Lily Elizabeth May Milne-Ward, has seen more than most of us can imagine. Betty, as she likes to be called, is as sharp as a tack and remembers every detail of her time as an aircraft woman in the Royal Australian Airforce during World War Two.
“I joined the RAAF on my 18th birthday with other young women who wanted to be trained up to help,” said Betty. “We were rookies back then, but we were well and truly trained to march, I can tell you, and a few weeks later, the Americans arrived in Bankstown, so we were moved to Melbourne.”
Betty worked as a nurse in her first year in service, in No. 2 RAAF Hospital in Ascot Vale, Melbourne.
Between 1942 and 1943, Australia came under Japanese air raid attack. The injured were brought back to Melbourne for the nurses to mend.
It wasn’t long before the RAAF saw a better way to use Betty’s quick learning skills.
“There weren’t enough men when they opened the technical mustering positions, so after I served 12 months in the hospital, they sent me to my new post for training at the South Australian School of Mines and Industries, where I worked with basic metals and was given three months of electrical training,” says Betty.
“After that, they decided to post me to the electrical side and I was sent to Adelmo Technology in NSW where other female electricians and I continued our regional training for another six months, then one more month of actual aircraft training.”
Betty recalls there were 23 girls in the electrical training team, but they peeled off some of the operational training unit to work radio and other instrument maintenance, while the rest of them learned circuitry and aircraft maintenance.
“I worked on the bombers. It was a very busy time because not only did we work seven days a week, but we also worked three nights a week on top of that,” she said. “But it had to be done – we had to look after the bombers for our pilots.”
After some of the men started returning from Africa, a lot of different fighter planes came over too, so the women had to train the pilots on how to do their own repairs in the field.
“They had to fly by the seat of their pants, so being an electrician came in very handy and I trained many of them up,” she says.
Yet, with all her professionalism, she didn’t forget how to have fun, and even used her skills for some sneaky manoeuvring.
“I was a bit naughty sometimes too,” she tells us. “Once I bought a radio from one of the soldiers at camp, but we didn’t have any electricity to run it, so I cut into the light circuit and ‘stole’ the electricity from the light so we could jive.”
“I spent four years in the RAAF as an electrician. My service number was 90723, and I remember everything – especially how much hard work it was, but we had fun too.”
Betty also recalls the American bands that were popular then.
“We made sure to keep the spirit alive with dancing,” she says. “I especially remember the row of gunnies at one end of the room, while our group of girls was at the other end, and the song When the Saints Go Marching In was playing while we all just stared at each other with pink cheeks.”
“Gosh we were all so young back then.”
