Here is the story of Thelma Zimmerman.

When war broke out, Thelma was working in an ice cream factory. She and her boyfriend decided to get married, join up, and help win that war. For her, that meant service as a telephonist in the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force.

Military service runs deep in her family’s history. Her father, George Kinsman, was a World War I veteran, seeing action on the Western Front, and her brother, Sydney Kinsman, became a Rat of Tobruk and a prisoner of war.

Thelma’s story was collected as part of a oral history community project called World War II in Words where South Australian World War Two veterans shared their stories in their own words.