of their truck to get their first look at their new barracks. It was much larger than the one they had come from, and there was a general hum of excitement between them as they took in all the new buildings.
As the truck stopped they jumped down, their new superior officer was waiting to meet them and they automatically lined up at attention to meet her. She was a long, stringy woman, with a high-pitched, plummy accent and a serious overbite, and with a broad smile she stepped forward to greet them with a long lurching stride.
She introduced herself as Sergeant Wheaton and gave them brief instructions about barracks procedures then informing them that though they would be living on base here, they actually would be plotting out of the operations room in Kenley.
There was a ripple of hushed excitement around the group. Once they had settled in, they would begin their new training straight away.
Though she already missed Diana, Lizzie was excited to be working as a filter plotter, or, as it was also known, a clerk of special duties. They weren’t given long to unpack before they all shipped over to Kenley to take a tour of the operations room.
The offices, located underground for safety, were attached to the airfield at Kenley. And as they crossed the parade ground, a Spitfire tore over their heads and landed on the runway in front of them to line itself up with more Spitfires that were waiting for duty. Beside her, one of the girls swore in surprise. It was exhilarating to watch the pilots in action, and all the girls cheered as another took off and roared over their heads.
‘Go get ’em, lads,’ shouted one of the girls, pumping her fist in the air.
Making their way down into the operations room, Sergeant Wheaton informed them that for their first week, they would be observing the work they were training to do and also be in the classroom learning how to plot coordinates correctly.
The girls followed Sergeant Wheaton down a long, cold, dark tunnel, their feet echoing on the damp flagstones as they moved below ground, finally arriving at the plotting room. With hushed revelry, they filtered into the vast room that was alive with activity.
Inside were about thirty or forty people already at work, and the air was hot and alive with conversation and motion. It had the hum and lively energetic movement of a casino Lizzie had seen on a film in the church hall once. Everyone was concentrating on their work, many of them talking to one another via phone headsets all the plotters were wearing.
The room was situated on two levels. On the ground level where they stood, illuminated by long pendant lighting, was a huge map of southern England and the French coast. Gathered around it were the people known as the plotters – men and women, but mainly women, who stood next to the map with a long billiard-cue-sized plotter. Lizzie watched in awe as the woman in front of her received information through her headphones and then pushed aircraft into position on the map with her plotter. This was the job Lizzie herself would be doing in a matter of days.
On the second level, around the room, were officers who helped coordinate the effort. Their job, they were informed by Sergeant Wheaton, was to collect all the information coming in from around the different areas and signal to the plotters what needed to be moved. Sergeant Wheaton continued telling them in a whisper that out along the coastline were the coastal spotters. They were all located in bunkered areas watching for planes through their binoculars, their job to inform this station what kind of planes were on their way, in what numbers, and heading in which direction.
The officer on the second level would confirm this with any radar information that was coming in at the same time. This allowed the commanders to instruct the girls on the floor of what planes needed to be moved where.
All the trainees were allowed to wear headsets to listen in on what the plotters were listening to. The information coming in described the heights, number, and placement of the aircraft on their way in. As the data filtered through, a plotter pushed onto the map a plane marked ‘H’, which stood for ‘hostile’, and the direction the plane was flying in from. Lizzie overheard the call come through to the girl she was listening in with, and heard