Chapter 9, School Daze and other ramblings on the 2 year anniversary
So, Chapter 9 of AW went up today, on the second anniversary of when I started posting TSG. Yikes. My notifications through FF.net are completely screwy. I am not getting them at all or they come 12 to 24 hours later. This doesn't help my perennial anxiety whenever I post. So, do let me know, here or via a review if you got it.
A huge thanks to all of you who made note of letters that you wanted to read and thought should be included. In looking through this chapter, it really is a sum and substance of so much that has gone before and so much of what is to come.
The Research
I always say this but in this case, it was really hard to write of Ruby suffering racism and what I am doing to Jill Pole and her family. Sources on black race relations in the UK were wildly conflicting and contradictory, but among the ones I looked to:
The WRENS
Caribbean RAF
Experiences of a Black British Commonwealth Soldier
The Yanks are Coming -- Black American Soldiers in the UK
Meeting Joe Louis
Moving Here
WREN at Bletchley Park
The women of Bletchley Park
On issues of recruitment, training, and such (with a huge thanks to Theoretica!)
Recruiting and training
Paradata, Anthony John Clark
(and others at the site)
Pegasus Bridge
2nd Airborne Battalion, Oxs & Bucks
Ambrose's Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944
Kramer's Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France
Also, pretty! Beaulieu
And because there must be a beaver, Castor fiber
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland, MP, Labour Party Chief Woman Officer
A History of the Blue Funnel Line
Lane's, The Merchant Seaman's War
Reflections
2 years! Whoa. The highlights are undoubtedly the awesome women I've met along the way with amazing interests and insights. Yes, I know, ideally, I had this all this story mapped and presented it to you like Athena from Zeus' head. But, I enjoy immensely treating this as an interactive and iterative process. Over and over there are things here that are far better because readers helped me put it there. Fan fic provides the framework for our interaction -- the excuse that allows us to get to know each other better across the great expanse of the Internet, like ladies chatting across a backyard fence.
The lowlights? Oh gosh, no surprise there. Finding myself all unknowing in the middle of a culture war and the stinging slump of last summer. The beauty of the highlights described above, however, is what truly pulls me through. Thanks so much for the friendship!
A huge thanks to all of you who made note of letters that you wanted to read and thought should be included. In looking through this chapter, it really is a sum and substance of so much that has gone before and so much of what is to come.
The Research
I always say this but in this case, it was really hard to write of Ruby suffering racism and what I am doing to Jill Pole and her family. Sources on black race relations in the UK were wildly conflicting and contradictory, but among the ones I looked to:
The WRENS
Caribbean RAF
Experiences of a Black British Commonwealth Soldier
The Yanks are Coming -- Black American Soldiers in the UK
Meeting Joe Louis
Moving Here
WREN at Bletchley Park
The women of Bletchley Park
On issues of recruitment, training, and such (with a huge thanks to Theoretica!)
Recruiting and training
Paradata, Anthony John Clark
(and others at the site)
Pegasus Bridge
2nd Airborne Battalion, Oxs & Bucks
Ambrose's Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944
Kramer's Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France
Also, pretty! Beaulieu
And because there must be a beaver, Castor fiber
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland, MP, Labour Party Chief Woman Officer
A History of the Blue Funnel Line
Lane's, The Merchant Seaman's War
Reflections
2 years! Whoa. The highlights are undoubtedly the awesome women I've met along the way with amazing interests and insights. Yes, I know, ideally, I had this all this story mapped and presented it to you like Athena from Zeus' head. But, I enjoy immensely treating this as an interactive and iterative process. Over and over there are things here that are far better because readers helped me put it there. Fan fic provides the framework for our interaction -- the excuse that allows us to get to know each other better across the great expanse of the Internet, like ladies chatting across a backyard fence.
The lowlights? Oh gosh, no surprise there. Finding myself all unknowing in the middle of a culture war and the stinging slump of last summer. The beauty of the highlights described above, however, is what truly pulls me through. Thanks so much for the friendship!