An earlier post celebrated Joan’s 100th. March 2021 also marks 100 years of the Royal Australian Air Force and the 80th anniversary of the creation of the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF). The WAAAF was created following lobbying by women, who wished to serve more directly in the war effort, and by the Chief of the Air Staff, who wanted to release male personnel serving in Australia for service overseas. The WAAAF was the first and largest of the wartime Australian women's services and also forced the issue of equal pay for women.
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| Sergeant Joan Marsh |
Joan joined the WAAAF in February 1942, soon after her 21st birthday, and was one of the first twenty-three RADAR operators to be trained in Richmond, New South Wales, in June that year, and one of the first eight to ‘man’ a RADAR unit in Kiama, NSW.
The following poem celebrates the life-long bonds of this group of women.
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| Radar Returns, Volume 5, No 1. 1991. |
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| Their last big reunion in March 1991. Joan is in the centre in the black jacket with her arm around the poet. |
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