My name is Lillian Delamere, and three days after my eighteenth birthday I was assigned a posting to the south coast of England. The year was 1940, the war was not yet a year old and the posting was so secret no one told me where I was going, what I would be doing, or how I would be doing it. The war had changed my plans, just like it had changed everyone else’s.
Without the intervention of Hitler I would have been starting at Cambridge in September, the first female in my family to attend university. The period that would later be called the phony war was over, our troops had been thrashed in Belgium and France and sent packing from Dunkirk, but even so as I travelled in the back of an army truck through narrow lanes I had every expectation that next year, or at worst the year after, I would be able to pick up my life and start my studies in Mathematics.
In was early May and the trees were coming into full leaf. The weather had been fine for weeks, and I had high hopes of a good summer. With luck I might be near enough to the coast to fit in some swimming, even some sunbathing, if there weren’t too many troops around.
I was used to the constant wolf whistles and shouts asking for a kiss – or worse. I had no delusions about being a beauty. These were soldiers; tired, scared soldiers, and they would have whistled at my granny, and she had been dead for five years.
I spent two weeks training in Cornwall, then we were driven in a covered truck to a collection of wooden huts recently built on a flat plain with hills to the north and a clear view south to the distant sea. No one told us where we were. We were lined up in two rows on the parade ground and told to turn around, put a hand out and touch the shoulder of the person in front of us. The person we touched would be our room-mate, and that was how I met Georgia.
She filled her blue WAAF uniform much better than the rest of us, matching me almost exactly in height, but that was as far as any resemblance went. If Georgia and I walked past a troop of soldiers, I knew where all the wolf whistles would be directed.
We dropped our sparse kit in the hut assigned to us and sat on the narrow beds facing each other, our knees almost touching.
I put my hand out. “I’m Lillian Delamere,” I said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“Georgia Payne,” she said, shaking my hand. “Just love that accent.”
“What accent?” I asked, innocently. I noticed how soft her hands were, and released hers reluctantly.
“You Brits,” She laughed. “I guess we’d better learn to get along together.”
I had never seen anything quite as exotic as Georgia, and I think the moment she laughed was when I started falling in love.
“You’re American,” I said, stating the obvious. “If it’s not too rude to ask, what are you doing here? This isn’t your war. Not yet, anyway.”
She looked at me, her eyes tracking over my face for what seemed a long time before she appeared to make a decision. We were going to be friends.
“My Pop’s a Brit. He came back over when the war broke out and brought us all with him. I wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines while that shit Hitler kicked sand in everyone’s face so I joined up too.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Just my luck. I was gonna start at CalTech this fall. I guess that’s on the back burner now.”
“What’s CalTech?” I asked.
“College. University.”
“Oh. Me too. At Cambridge though, not CalTech.”
“Yeah? What were you gonna major in?”
“Sorry?” It was dawning on me this was going to be harder than I thought. Weren’t we meant to speak the same language?
“Study. What do you guys say, what were you gonna 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. They want people who understand numbers, and can see patterns.”
“Yeah,” she said, laughing back. “I guess you’re right.”
We started work the next day, sitting in darkened huts watching a single trace run across an oscilloscope. Our training had told us what we had to do, but not how it worked. We were at one of the very first RDF stations. Soon there would be many more, forming an invisible barrier between Britain and Hitler’s forces.
RDF was the forerunner of RADAR. I read, many years later, that German Radar was far superior to ours, but was 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 worked as a team, so were always in the equipment room together. In those early days our scanning lines only ever moved when one of the training planes came in, and then we would tune the receiver and call out distance and elevation. But before long the signals we picked up were German bombers and fighters. As the spring gave way to early summer the planes came more and more often, at night as well as in the day, and we worked twelve hour shifts, twelve on, twelve off. Sometimes we slept in the dark. Other times we pulled the blackout curtains over our window to block out the sun. Trying to sleep in the day was difficult, the huts heating up until we lay on our narrow beds with sweat pouring off us.
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. There were two toilets, one at each end of the hut, shared between 12 girls. That was it. Home.
Twice a week we were allowed showers. These took place in a communal block where the complement of each hut had to strip off and we were allowed five minutes to complete our ablutions in tepid water. I had always been shy; even during my years in a girl’s school I did not like anyone to see my body. Now any inhibitions I had were soon knocked out of me.
The first time we went to the shower block I tried not to stare at Georgia as the twelve of us stripped our uniforms off and stepped into the long concrete walled room studded with shower heads. I tried, and failed. I noticed some of the other girls looking too. It was difficult not to. She 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 breasts looked enormous, blooming from her chest, trembling as she soaped herself completely without shame. They looked as though they should sag a little, but they stood proud and firm, their deep undersides never once touching her body. When she dropped the soap and bent to pick it up I turned away so that no one would catch me looking at the flared globes of her backside. It was perfection, her waist nipped in above, her legs long and shapely. I knew I didn’t like boys, but until then I hadn’t realized quite how much I liked girls.
As time went on I knew I was falling in love with Georgia. I did everything I could to avoid giving her any indication, even sometimes being deliberately rude to her, but whatever I did she was always there with a smile and a laugh.
There were men stationed on the base, and a lot of the girls made it clear they were available, although I never saw any indication of that from Georgia.
I clearly recall one evening as we walked back from the NAAFI. It was just dusk, light still holding in the sky but little of it reaching the ground. We came around a corner on the way back to our hut and Georgia grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
Her teeth showed white in the gloom.
“Hey, look, Lil. Can you see what Gilly Bates is doing?”
“I didn’t see her,” I said.
Georgia pulled me so I could look around the corner. “There,” she said. “You see now?”
I peered into the gloom, seeing nothing at first, then a shape formed from the shadows. Or rather two shapes. Gilly Bates was kneeling on the grass in front of a soldier. His uniform trousers were undone, hanging around his knees, and his cock was jutting out. Gilly had the end of it in her mouth and her hand was rubbing the base.
“What is she doing?” I said, shocked.
“Giving him the time of his life, honey,” Georgia said.
“Is she… is that his… oh my God, Georgia, she’s got his dick in her mouth!”
“Yeah,” Georgia nodded. “She’s going for it too, I’ll give her that.”
“But… why would she want to do that?”
“Why do you think, Lil? I guess some girls like the taste, yeah?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I could never…”
Georgia laughed softly, bumping against my shoulder. “I guess you couldn’t at that, Lil. That doesn’t surprise me, honey.”
“You’ve never… have you…” I looked at her, my head spinning at the idea that my Georgia’s beautiful mouth might do something like that.
“Me? Hell no, Lil. You won’t catch me anywhere near one of those things.”
My heart pattered in my breast. “I should think not,” I said, and the way I sounded sent Georgia off into another bout of laughter.
“Hey, who’s there!” a male voice called.
Georgia pulled me back, but not before we had been spotted.
“Is that you Lil? Georgia?” I heard Gilly’s voice, then she laughed. “You want some of this, girls? There’s plenty to go around.”
Georgia grabbed my hand and tugged me back around the corner and we ran off across the parade ground, giggling. My hand felt cold and lonely when she finally released her grip.
We became best friends, and, I liked to think, more than that. Not that I ever gave Georgia any indication of my feelings.
She was more difficult to read. She was always so relaxed and different, so tactile, thinking nothing of slipping her arm around my waist in the hut, but never outside, sometimes resting her hand low down where my skinny backside tried to fill my uniform skirt. I became, if anything, more reserved around her, standing at the other end of the shower room, but it didn’t work because she just strolled down to join me.
The other girls were friendly, but there was always a distance between us and them. We were regarded as best friends, and an unspoken rule said we were not to be parted. We ate together, rode into town to watch newsreels and films together, took walks across the downs, ate at the same table and slept separated by three feet of space between our beds.
It was four weeks after we met, in the middle of July, when I first heard Georgia when she thought I was asleep. Then one night I resolved I would confirm my suspicions.
The bedroom wasn’t fully dark, it never was. A night light always burned softly in case we were called out suddenly and needed to find our way. I was lying on my back, gazing up at the ceiling and listening to the sounds coming across from Georgia’s bed. The metal springs didn’t need a lot of encouragement to squeak, and I heard them moving gently, rhythmically. I had been listening to these noises, every second or third night, for the last two weeks. There was only one reason for them, and thinking about what that was made the breath catch in my chest.
In two days we had a long weekend pass, and Georgia and I would be travelling to Berkshire. I had invited her to my parents farm, told her she had to come and find out what real English country life was about. She had only ever seen London, where her father was based. Georgia had laughed and agreed at once.
I lay on my bed, feeling a tingle between my legs and a powerful urge to touch myself there. Just like Georgia was doing. I didn’t know why I wasn’t touching that spot. It wouldn’t be the first time. All through school I had done it. All the girls did. Well, nearly all. It had been common enough that no-one thought anything about it. We teased each other, asking if they’d tickled one out yet today. Common enough that some of the girls did it in front of each other. Not me, but sometimes I had wanted to.
It wasn’t just that I was shy, but because it meant too much to me. Most of the girls were passing through a phase, growing up and feeling their sexuality blossoming. They needed to find a release and that was it. In a couple more years they would meet nice boys, get married and find other ways of achieving pleasure. I simply didn’t think about boys.
I sighed, making it sound, I hoped, as though I was asleep, and rolled onto my side facing Georgia’s bed. I slitted my eyes, opening them just enough to see across the gap to her bed. Georgia was also on her side, looking back across the gap and my heart hammered in my flat chest. Did Georgia know I was awake? I lay still, trying to make my breathing slow and calm.
Georgia’s eyes were open, staring across the gap. Staring at me.
There was an almost pained expression on her pretty lips and her eyebrows pulled together in a tiny frown. The bed shook gently. Georgia’s right leg was crooked. Her shoulder, which showed above the blankets, was moving rapidly. The blankets had worked loose as she moved and displayed the front of her low cut nightdress, that American nightdress that I remember shocking me when Georgia first pulled it on. It fell to below her knees, but was cut low enough for her breasts to almost spill out, not that it made a great deal of difference because the material was sheer enough to display everything that lay beneath.
Now Georgia’s abundant breasts trembled and quivered in sympathy with the movement of her arm, her deep cleavage shadowed. I felt suddenly warm, but tried to keep my breathing steady and my eyes closed to a slit. My hand, which was resting against my belly, wanted to move down, wanted to fumble into my old pajama bottoms and I willed myself to be still.
Georgia was speeding up, her breathing growing harsher and she lifted her free hand and pushed the back against her mouth, trying to suppress the sounds she was making. Her eyes glittered above her hand, her shoulder rocking fast as her fingers worked under her nightdress.
I was sure I could smell the scent of Georgia’s sex coming across the space between the beds. I sighed deeply, trying to make it sound like a snore, hoping to convince Georgia I was still asleep. Georgia looked like she didn’t care anymore. Her whole body was now moving, her leg lifting and dropping back, the rough blanket rising and falling with it. Her hand pressed back harder against her wonderful lips and she gave a little whimper, trying hard to keep the noise in. Her arm stopped moving and went rigid. Her eyes fluttered, still staring across at me, then rolling back a little. Another cry slipped between her lips and she dropped her hand and I saw she was biting her bottom lip, trying to still the noises. Georgia shivered violently, her whole body shaking, and the old springs on her single bed creaked and bounced in sympathy. This went on for almost a minute, then Georgia let out the breath she was holding and relaxed.
I watched as Georgia re-arranged the bedding, pulled her nightdress down under the blankets, tugged the blankets up over her shoulders. She looked across at me for a while longer, then rolled onto her back.
I waited, watching Georgia’s wonderful breasts heave and then grow still. Listened as her breathing smoothed out and became quiet. Georgia rolled again, turning away. I stayed where I was, aware of my hand still lying against my belly, fighting hard to keep it where it was. It wanted to creep down and touch that wonderful, sensitive area between my legs, where I just knew I would find myself wet.
In the morning Georgia was her usual loud self, shivering in the cold of our small room but still not putting any more clothes on. She leaned over the tiny sink and brushed her teeth, the sheer nightdress hiding little of what lay beneath, and I lay in bed waiting my turn and watched guiltily the curvaceous shape of my roommate.
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