Sydney schoolgirl Erica Douglass was 11 when WWII broke out

Erica Douglass was 11 when World War II broke out and all she wanted was to get in an airplane and fly high into the sky to help.

Erica, now 92, was living in Dee Why in Sydney at the time and while nobody in her immediate family enlisted she knew plenty of people who had and was keen to join them.

"I liked maps so I would get the maps and put them up in the bedroom and mark off where we were, particularly as the Pacific war got worse," she tells 9Honey.

"It sounds strange and peculiar but I would wish I could have been in it and yes, I just felt that if I could be there flying around helping get planes to other people that would be the thing," she says.

When she turned 16, Erica signed up to the Australian Women's Flying Club, which had been founded by Nancy Bird Walton, otherwise known as 'The Angel of the Outback'.

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She famously got her pilot's license at 19, becoming the youngest Australian woman to gain one. She went on to help set up the flying doctor service in outback New South Wales.

She was far too young to be eligible to gain her pilot's license but did all the training she could and was about to begin learning to fly in an actual plane when WWII ended just before her 17th birthday.

Despite not getting to help with the war effort, Erica always felt close to those who had and in particular her cousin Eric who died in WWI during a battle in Burma.

She remembers building craft airplanes and hanging them from the ceiling of her bedroom and the one time a friend took her for a flight over her Dee Why home, letting her help land the plane at Bankstown which she says was bouncy at best.

That was during the war, when the beach at Dee Why had been bulldozed in preparation for an attack from Japan.

"So instead of the lovely sand dunes - we used to love to sit there and hide behind them - they just wiped them right out and put wire across them," she says.

Erica's daughter Michelle also spoke with 9Honey for Remembrance Day and she remembers her mother telling her stories of being able to see Australian naval ships out in the ocean, standing guard.

Erica doesn't see anything strange about her wanting to join the war effort. "I think our attitude was different back then with volunteering and that changed with conscription during Vietnam War," she says. "If you say something to people now about how we saw enlisting as a great adventure they'd think we were mad.

"We didn't know too much and those who went had their expectations dashed."

Erica lived in Australian for most of her life apart from two years in Britain and a short time in Italy where she studied fencing, having picked up the sport during her time at a school for performing arts.

It was on the ship back from her Italian adventure that she met a British man named George Patient who, after four years of diligent and respectful pursuit, she married.

George did fight in the war, but Michelle says her dad rarely spoke about it.

"I do recall he joined all the RSL clubs but not until later and he watched the ANZAC march on TV but didn't get involved until the 1980s," she says. Michelle also remembers her father visiting the Cenotaph in Dee Why.

Michelle says her father and his fellow veterans preferred not to speak of the things they saw during combat and she didn't ask.

"I think he was just in too much pain and it was too raw," she says.

That's what led her to use Ancestry.com.au to try learn more about her father's life following his death in 1992 and at the same time, she began to piece together parts of her mother's life as well.

Michelle remembers Erica being a progressive mother, well ahead of her time and in stark contrast to her friend's mothers.

"My friends would all come to my house," Michelle recalls. "She was more liberal and forward thinking. She tried to learn to fly but the war ended too soon and she learned fencing and was picked for the Olympics for Australia and walked away when they didn't like her style of play."

Her mother ended up teaching fencing and Michelle says she always found her "inspirational".

"She was thoughtful and mindful but not restrictive," Michelle says.

Michelle has enjoyed getting to know her parents more through her research into their pasts, particularly her father following his death.

Each year on Remembrance Day Michelle and Erica observe two minutes of silence at 11am to remember not only fallen soldiers but everyone who has been impacted by wars.

"For me Remembrance Day is much larger than the end of the great war and our ANZAC Day which is more about military remembrance," she says.

"What I like about Remembrance Day is it helps us remember all those affected by war and still effected to this day."

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