Georgia's English Rose by JT Harding Page A

read?”
    “Mathematics,” I said.
    “Yeah? Me too. Small world, hey?”
    I laughed. “I think that’s why we’re here,
Georgia. We’ve both had the training. I expect they want people who
understand numbers and can see patterns.”
    “Yeah,” she said, laughing back. “I guess
you’re right, Lil.” It was the first time anyone had ever called me
Lil, and I liked the way it sounded on Georgia’s lips as her accent
drew the word out.
     
    We started work the
following morning as six, sitting in darkened huts watching a
single trace run across an oscilloscope screen. Our training had
taught us what we needed to do, but not how the equipment worked.
We had been assigned to one of the first RDF stations. Soon many
more would be erected, the tall towers and strung cable forming an
invisible barrier between Britain and Hitler’s aircraft.
    RDF was the forerunner of RADAR. I read many
years later that German Radar was far superior to ours but more
difficult to build and operate. Someone had said: “RDF was second,
if not third best. But second best was better than no best, and
that’s what we worked with.”
    Georgia and I operated as a team, spending
most of our time in the equipment room together. In those early
days our scanning lines only moved when a training plane came in.
We would tune our receiver and call out distance and elevation.
Before long the signals we picked up came from German bombers and
fighters. As spring gave way to early summer the planes became more
frequent, flying at night as well as during the day and we worked
longer shifts, twelve hours on, twelve hours off. Sometimes we
slept in the dark. Other times we pulled the blackout curtains over
our window to block the sun. Trying to sleep in the day was
difficult, the huts heating up until we lay on our narrow beds with
sweat pouring from our bodies.
    Our hut had been erected in haste and as
long as we lived there the smell of fresh pine stayed with us,
rough planks oozing sap where knots had been cut. A long central
corridor gave access to three rooms on each side. Each room housed
two girls, held two single beds made of grey metal covered in hard
horsehair mattresses, and a sink which ran only cold water. Two
toilets, one at each end of the corridor, served twelve girls. This
was our home. There was no bath or shower in the huts. Twice a week
we used communal showers in the wash block, where the residents of
each hut stripped to be allowed five minutes standing under tepid
water. I had always been shy. Even during my years in a girls
school I had not been comfortable displaying my body. Now any
inhibitions I had were soon knocked from me.
    The first time we went to the shower block I
tried hard not to stare at Georgia as the twelve of us stripped
from our uniforms and stepped into the long concrete-walled room
studded with shower heads. Tried and failed. I noticed some of the
other girls looking too. It was difficult not to. Georgia was
magnificent. As tall as me, but where I had short red-brown hair
Georgia’s was black and full, falling in curls to her shoulders.
Her large and shapely breasts quivered, trembling as she soaped
herself without any hint of shame. I gazed in awe, believing her
breasts ought to sag a little under their own weight, but instead
they stood firm and proud, their deep undersides never once
touching her body. When Georgia dropped the soap and bent to pick
it up I turned away so no-one would catch me staring at the flared
globes of her rear. She was perfection, waist nipped in above her
hips, legs long and shapely. I knew I didn’t like boys, but until
that moment I hadn’t realized quite how much I liked girls.
    As time passed it became impossible to hide
from myself how quickly, how deeply, I was falling in love with
Georgia. I did everything I could to avoid showing any indication
of my true feelings, even sometimes being deliberately rude, but
whatever I did her smile and laugh remained, twisting my heart