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Before Ottawa knew, before Washington knew, Frances Surtees, née Grobb, a 21-year-old air force wireless operator in St. John's, Nfld., got the news: The war in Europe was over.
Actually the other five women sitting by their wireless keys in the windowless office that day in May 1945 knew, too. They heard the code for an "A" message come over Grobb's device. An A-coded message meant a declaration of war or an end to war.
"We never thought we'd get an `A' message, but we did. It was very thrilling. Everyone was cheering."
But Grobb had to concentrate, had to listen to the coded 1,000-word message of scattered letters and numbers, and copy it down precisely. The sergeant-on-duty grabbed the copy and ran to the decoding room. The message, she says, would then be sent to Ottawa and Washington.
Soon church bells across St. John's would be ringing, whistles blowing, cars honking, but there was no dancing in the streets for Grobb. She finished her shift, which had begun at midnight, and went back to the dormitory to sleep.
Posted in her barracks was a long list of the off-limits St. John's bars, those considered too rough for the young ladies. "I wasn't a bar person, but it would have been easier to post the list we were allowed to go to."
She had grown up in Whitby, taken a business course after high school and was thinking about a job in Toronto, but her mother preferred she take a military post. "She said, 'You'll get some supervision there.' "
In the co-ed dining room, Bill Surtees, an air force sergeant, had his eye on the young curly-haired brunette in her smart blue uniform and fancied meeting her. So he grabbed two buddies and a deck of cards and sat at a table, lying in wait. As she passed by, he innocently asked, "Do you play bridge? Would you care to join us?" And so their wartime romance began.
After VE day, she was sent to Moncton for six months. Wireless operators were needed to help organize getting the boys home.
Then she was discharged, never to use her wireless skills again. She and Bill married in 1946 and had three daughters.
Whatever happened to her smart air force uniform?
"Most of it got cut up and made into children's clothes," says Surtees, sitting in her room at the veterans residence at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, her walls decorated with family photos. "We had to be very frugal in those days."
