Shortly after Bermudian veteran Isabell Flood signed up to join the Royal Canadian Air Force, she recalls an officer asking her why she had volunteered.

Mrs Flood said she quietly responded: “So men might fly.”

She added: “He wasn’t capable of flying so I think I said the wrong thing, but it was okay.”

While she never saw the front lines, Mrs Flood was one of hundreds of women who volunteered during the Second World War to support the war effort.

Speaking yesterday, she said she first signed up to serve in September 1943 at the age of 18. She said that she had already served with the Brownies and the Girl Guides, so she felt volunteering for the war effort was a logical next step.

“I was just so interested in helping,” she said.

“I think I was too shy to be nervous.”

She and six other Bermudian women signed up, and were sent on a gruelling six-hour flight on a seaplane to New York before continuing on to Canada for basic training.

“My mother wished me the best,” she said. “She gave me an American dollar, which I carried with me the whole time until I got back here. They all thought it was wonderful and wished me luck.

“We were the second contingent. We were in training for about six weeks. I didn’t know what my role was going to be. They decided, the head office decided they were going to send me to Ontario. They just shipped you where you were needed.”

Mrs Flood said she was deployed twice to the estates section, given the unenviable job of writing up the deaths of fallen soldiers.

“Hundreds were dying daily, and we were typing up the names of the men who were dying overseas,” she said. “It was very hard because there were so many cards you had to fill out and every day you got a new list.

“There were about ten of us typing there, and we saw their suitcases come in. It was very depressing, so they told us not to go out into the warehouse. Just stay in.”

She recalls going with a colleague to visit someone who was severely wounded in combat.

“He had been laying on the ground for who know’s how many days or weeks when they finally found him alive,” she said. “They got him back and put him in hospital, but he was a vegetable laying there. It was sad. The hospital was just full of men that were wounded.

“I don’t know why we have to have wars, why men have to die. And now women. It’s stupid.”

Mrs Flood remained with the Royal Canadian Air Force for three years, leaving only after the war had concluded and the list of fallen soldiers finally tapered off. Despite the challenges, she said: “I loved serving. I figured that we have to do something and it was a job, but we got to the stage where all of the deceased had been reported so the department was finished.”

When the war ended, she said she was asked where she wanted to be discharged and she said Vancouver.

“When I got there, the officer asked why I went to Vancouver for discharge. I said, ‘Well, they asked me where I wanted to go ...’. She looked at me and laughed, saying I had forfeited my trip back to Bermuda. I said not to worry, I was going to school before I go back home. So I went back to school and studied secretarial bookkeeping.”

Asked if she intends to be part of this year’s Remembrance Day festivities, she said she would try, noting that she still has her uniform ready to wear.

“It still fits,” she said. “I weigh less now that I did when I was in service, but it still fits.”