Women of the WAAF: Daphne Pearson GC

The woman who ran towards a burning aircraft.

When we remember the women of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, it is easy to picture the familiar images: WAAFs working over plotting tables, driving staff cars across windswept airfields, operating telephones, repairing aircraft or waiting beside bicycles outside station buildings.

Yet behind those photographs were thousands of individual women, each with her own story. Some were extraordinary.

For the first in a new series looking at the real women who served in the WAAF during the Second World War, there could perhaps be no better place to begin than with Joan Daphne Mary Pearson — a medical orderly whose instinct, when confronted with a burning aircraft carrying bombs, was not to run away from it. She ran towards it.

Before the WAAF

Daphne Pearson was born at Christchurch, near Bournemouth, on 25th May 1911, the daughter of a clergyman.

She attended St Brandon’s School in Bristol and developed a career in photography, including running her own portrait studio in St Ives, Cornwall. Ill health eventually forced her to give up the studio, and she went on to undertake a variety of work.

By the beginning of the war, Daphne was managing the retail side of a farm in Kent.

She was also fascinated by aviation. She had learned to fly and was reportedly only a few hours short of gaining her pilot’s licence when the outbreak of war brought civilian flying to a halt.

In 1939, Daphne joined the newly established Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, serving as a medical orderly.

She was posted to RAF Detling in Kent. Also based at Detling was No. 500 Squadron, then part of RAF Coastal Command and flying Avro Ansons on maritime and reconnaissance operations. It was here, in the darkness of an early summer morning in 1940, that her name would enter RAF history.

31st May 1940

Britain was living through one of the most desperate moments of the war.

Across the Channel, the evacuation from Dunkirk was under way. Thousands of British and Allied troops were being brought back from France while the situation in Western Europe deteriorated at terrifying speed.

At RAF Detling, however, operations continued. Shortly after one o’clock in the morning on 31 May 1940, an Avro Anson of No. 500 Squadron was returning from operations.

Something was badly wrong.

Daphne was in the WAAF quarters when she heard the aircraft in distress. Moments later, the Anson crashed in flames in a field close to the station. She was a corporal in the medical section and, rather than wait for someone else to respond, immediately made for the crash site.

The Anson was burning. Worse still, Daphne knew there were bombs aboard.

Two members of the crew had managed to get themselves clear, but the pilot, Pilot Officer David Bond, was seriously injured and remained in the wreckage.

Despite the flames and the danger posed by the aircraft’s fuel and bomb load, Daphne climbed onto the wreckage. Bond was stunned and unable to free himself. She roused him, released his parachute harness and helped him clear of the aircraft.

Then she began moving him away from the burning Anson.

Around thirty yards separated them from the wreckage when the danger Daphne already knew was there became terrifyingly real.

A 120 lb bomb exploded. Daphne did not attempt to save herself.

She threw herself across the injured pilot, using her own body to shield him from the blast and flying splinters. Her official gallantry citation later concluded that her prompt and courageous actions had undoubtedly helped to save Bond’s life.

And then she went back.

It would be easy to end the story there. She had already climbed onto a burning aircraft loaded with explosives, freed a seriously injured pilot, moved him to relative safety and covered him with her own body as a bomb detonated nearby.

But Daphne Pearson was not finished. She remained with Bond until a stretcher party arrived.

Then she returned towards the burning aircraft. There had been four men aboard the Anson. One was still missing. Despite the risk of further explosions, Daphne went back to search for him. Tragically, the missing wireless operator was already dead.

Only after establishing that nothing more could be done did she return to the station sick quarters. There she continued working, helping to tend the other injured members of the crew until around three o’clock in the morning.

And then comes perhaps one of the most revealing details of the entire story. At around eight o’clock that same morning, Daphne Pearson reported for duty as usual.

“My little bit”

News of what had happened could not remain within RAF Detling. Daphne was recommended for a gallantry award, although she appears to have regarded the attention with considerable discomfort.

Writing to her mother afterwards, she compared what she had done with the extraordinary events then unfolding at Dunkirk and wrote: “My little bit is nothing at all.”

It is difficult to imagine a sentence that better illustrates the woman behind the medal.

On 19 July 1940, Daphne was awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal. At the time, the George Cross did not yet exist. King George VI established the George Cross later that year to recognise acts of the greatest heroism or the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger away from the presence of the enemy. The Empire Gallantry Medal was discontinued and existing awards were exchanged for the new decoration.

Daphne therefore became a recipient of the George Cross. She was later invested by King George VI at Buckingham Palace and is widely recognised as the first woman to receive the George Cross. She had already become the first woman to receive a gallantry decoration during the Second World War.

Her courage was even mentioned in Parliament by Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

More than one night

There is a danger when telling stories of gallantry that an entire lifetime becomes reduced to a few dramatic minutes. Daphne Pearson lived another sixty years after that night at Detling.

Only weeks after the crash, she was commissioned as a WAAF officer. She subsequently served in postings connected with Bomber Command and recruitment, and by the end of the war held the rank of Flight Officer.

When she was demobilised in 1946, Daphne became an assistant governor at the women’s institution at Aylesbury.

Her life then took another direction entirely. She studied horticulture and later joined the staff of the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She also established her own horticultural business in Kew.

In 1959, Daphne moved to Australia. There she continued her horticultural career, working in Victoria for the Department of Agriculture and later in government service. Her interest in plants continued for the remainder of her life and she contributed to work recording Australian plant collectors and illustrators.

She died in Melbourne on 25 July 2000, aged 89.

Remembering Daphne Pearson

Today, Daphne’s George Cross is held in the collections of the Imperial War Museums. A memorial at Detling also commemorates the courage she displayed there. But perhaps the most important part of her story is not the medal.

It is the decision she made before there was any thought of medals, citations or newspaper stories.

An aircraft had crashed. There were injured men inside. It was burning and she knew it was carrying bombs. And Daphne Pearson went towards it.

The history of the RAF during the Second World War is understandably filled with the names of pilots and aircrew. But behind them were the women who staffed the stations, drove the vehicles, maintained equipment, plotted aircraft, handled communications, treated the wounded and performed countless other jobs that kept the service functioning.

Sometimes those women were placed in extraordinary circumstances themselves.

On 31 May 1940, a 29 year old WAAF corporal at RAF Detling was faced with exactly such a moment.

She did not think what she had done was particularly remarkable.

History has, quite rightly, disagreed.

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Women of the WAAF is a Bomber County Books series telling the stories of the real women who served alongside the RAF during the Second World War — from the extraordinary acts remembered in medal citations to the everyday work, friendships and experiences which rarely made the history books.

Sources & further reading

This blog has been compiled using contemporary records and material held by recognised museums, archives and historical organisations. Wherever possible, details of Daphne Pearson’s actions on 31 May 1940 have been checked against her official gallantry citation.

• The London Gazette — Daphne Pearson’s original Empire Gallantry Medal citation, published 19 July 1940.

• Royal Air Force Museum — biographical material, contemporary correspondence and accounts of Pearson’s actions at RAF Detling.

• Imperial War Museums — collection records relating to Daphne Pearson, including her George Cross and the 1940 portrait painted by Dame Laura Knight.

• Victoria Cross and George Cross Association — biographical record and transcription of Pearson’s gallantry citation.

• Australian National Herbarium — biographical information relating to Pearson’s later life, horticultural career and work in Australia.

If you would like to explore Daphne Pearson’s story further, many of these collections can be searched online through the respective museum and archive websites.