Now we are finished and waiting for a way home. Every morning we would pack up and go out on an airfield to sit and wait for a plane, and at night, go back to camp. This went on for a week which seemed like a year. Finally, we got a plane. It was a two engine cargo plane in rough shape, but it looked beautiful. We flew to the coast and there was so much fog and rain, you couldn’t see. The radio was out, so we turned back and landed in Belgium, got a weather report, then headed back over the channel to England. It was so foggy that we went way up in the midlands before we could land.
They set us up for another wait. It seemed that we had no luck, even though we’d been there three and a half years. They were supposed to use the point system, but even with 5 battle stars, I didn’t have enough points to beat a WAC that had only been there six months. It was enough to make one a little bitter.
In London, the trains were great: underground, and you could get on and off anytime. They had double decker trolley cars. I was on the upper deck and every time we came to a bridge, I thought it was going to hit the top of the bus. I went to see the Robin Hood country and town. There were no empty places to sleep, so we got in a building with only chairs. It was colder than heck. But we had a good time.
I went to get a haircut. The barber set me in the chair and started to cut my hair, then at three o’clock, he took off his apron and said he had to go eat. My hair was half cut, so I had to wait until he came back to finish. He pulled a match and set my hair on fire. He took a towel and put out the fire. He said he was just firing the ends. I payed him, but I never had an English haircut again.
I was in London with a friend and we went into a café to get a meal. There was a gate to go through and in doing that, someone picked my pocket and stole my wallet. I never felt him take it. After that, I got one that tied around my body under my clothes and never lost it again.
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