At 21, Ellen Nickerson was desperate to go overseas. Today, 89-year-old Nickerson admitted she was a young naïve girl when she decided to join the RCAF Women's Division back in 1943.
"My mom thought any girl who joined was a trollop," she said with a laugh. "I don't really know why I joined, but I remember that my brother wanted to join but he couldn't because he was deaf.
"I was initially going to join the navy, but my girlfriend was joining the Air Force, so I decided to as well."
She was sent to an RCAF station in Rockcliffe, Ontario for basic training in April 1943. After basic training, Nickerson was given the chance to go overseas, an opportunity not all women got when joining the service.
During her time in London, England, she never witnessed air raids or bomb blasts within the city.
"We were quite far from the fighting," Nickerson said. The women were called WDs - which stood for the RCAF Women's Division.
Her assignment was plotting aircraft positions on a map. For that, she and the other WDs got .95 cents a day.
"But the air force covered all our food, lodging and clothing," Nickerson said.
Nickerson mapped both home and enemy positions on large black boards.
"We wore earphones and we listened to radar stations, which gave us the location of the airplanes and then we would mark them on a big map," Nickerson said as she pointed to a photograph of her at work in Britain, in her cap and uniform.
Her handsome husband George Nickerson (nicknamed Nick by his comrades) stood beside her in the photograph.
"One night was especially hard because one of the girls I worked with, her husband's plane never came back."
Nickerson held a photo album, which is in near mint condition. The well-preserved black and white photos give a rare peak into her life overseas.
She was stationed in Yorkshire, Britain where the RCAF was headquartered at Allerton Castle (known as Allerton Park during the war).
The diminutive Nickerson shyly handed the cherished album and remembered the story behind each photograph as if it were yesterday.
She pointed to a picture of what looked like long tubes.
"Those were our tents and we slept 12 women to a hut," she said, adding they often slept in their clothes. "One night in January the pipes froze in all of the tents except ours.
"That's because I had a candle that I lit and kept close to the pipes."
Nickerson met George in April 1945 and married him seven weeks later.
"He was working as a comptroller in the same office as me," Nickerson said. "We were married on June 12, 1945 in St. Martin's Church on the castle grounds."
Nickerson laughed softly when she recalled how her mother was adamant that her daughter not marry in her uniform. From her home in Winnipeg, her mother mailed her a wedding dress and new underwear.
"It got there just in time," she quipped.
Nickerson vividly remembered May 8, 1945 - VEDay, when Europe declared victory.
"That time spent in England was the best years of my life," she said.
It wasn't until a few months after the war ended that Nickerson boarded the ocean liner, SS Ile de France, along with more than 1,000 passengers, for the long ride home to Canada.
"I think we were at sea for about a week," she said, adding George had sailed home a week before her.
She and George resumed civilian life in Ottawa and went on to have three children.
On November 10, 1953, George Nickerson, an RCAF commanding officer, died in a plane crash while training on the CF-100 jet. He was 35 years old.
"I was 31 and our children were two, three and seven when he was killed - I never remarried," she said softly. "I never met anyone who was as good as him.
"After he died, I couldn't look at his picture for a year - it was far too painful."
The News interviewed both Tees and Nickerson at Gilmore Gardens, where they are residents.
mhopkins@richmond-news.com
