The streets of war-time England are a far cry from the peaceful surroundings of Kempsey. 

Born in 1923, Margaret, affectionately known as ‘Peg’, was a high school student when World War II began and engulfed her home country of England. 

As total war gripped the country, Margaret herself volunteered for service, spending three years in intelligence operations for the Royal Air Force from 1942 until the end of the war in 1945. 

A teenager during the first years of the war, German bombing was a constant presence in the life of English civilians. 

Margaret can still clearly remember looking up and seeing dogfights between German and English aircraft above the streets of Liverpool. 

On May 4, 1941 – the day before her family’s home was destroyed by a direct hit from a German bomb – Margaret said that firebombing raids had almost sent the house up in flame. 

“One of the incendiary rounds came through the roof and one of the beds caught on fire,” Margaret explained. The home was momentarily saved when her father threw the flaming mattress out the window.

The day after, when the 1000-pound bomb destroyed their home, Margaret and her family were sheltered beneath it in a bunker.

The bombing caused the house to collapse on their corrugated iron and sandbag shelter, with the family waiting for more than 10 hours to be dug out.

Among the rescuers was her father, who was an air raid warden tasked with warning the neighbourhood when German bombers approached.

Margaret reasoned that the heavy bombing her family’s home sustained was due to its proximity to a nearby railway track, the likely target of the German aircraft. 

The following year, Margaret applied to join the Royal Air Force.

Margaret said she wanted to be a driver, but after doing an intelligence test, Margaret recalled “they said ‘we could use your brain elsewhere’”.

She was sent to Snaith, a town in Yorkshire, to work in intelligence operations. 

Margaret explained that her role was “to collect and collate information” from the pilots and crews conducting bombing raids on Germany. 

“We put the words into the mouths of the men who briefed air crews,” she explained.

Her role saw her preparing raid reports and debriefing the pilots following their long distance operations. 

“We debriefed by serving hot coffee laced with rum – it helped loosen their tongues,” she said. 

It also helped settle pilots and crew who returned from the bombing raids shell-shocked.

“It steadied their nerves,” she said.

The bombing raids on Germany operated with mixed success, and Margaret remembers aircraft returning to England shot up and damaged.

Often, bombers would fail to return at all after being shot down.

The unit chaplain was inundated following raids where multiple aircraft were downed, so Margaret volunteered to help him.  

This included itemising the lockers of pilots and crew members who didn’t return. 

Amid the chaos of total war, love still managed to blossom. 

It was during her service that Margaret met Alan Marriott, from Gladstone, NSW. Alan was in England after serving in the Australian Air Force in Africa. 

The two fell swiftly in love and married in 1944. Shortly after the war, Margaret would be on a boat bound for the Macleay Valley, where she has lived ever since. 

A member of the Kempsey Macleay RSL Sub-branch, Margaret will lay a wreath for returned service women this ANZAC Day as she does every year. 

Looking back now, she remembers how total war gripped England.

“Everyone was either in the war, or working for the war,” she said.

Ordinary people grasped new roles and got on with it, Margaret explained.  “Everyone went about their business - there was nothing else you could do.”