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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Annie Hughes and has been added to the site with her permission….

During the war I lived in Shevington near Wigan and worked locally as a shorthand hand typist, I was later to spend two years in Gloucester doing this.

At night I was on duty in the ARP for a few hours, when we would sit and talk always keeping a good watch out for anything untoward.

Of course there was the rationing, but there was always someone with a bit of something to be had and we did get used to the shortages. Clothes were also were rationed, we had clothing coupons which we had to save to buy anything substantial like the fabric for my wedding dress.

I married on April 14th 1941 and wore a long white dress and veil, I had four bridesmaids, two in royal blue velvet and two in red. The reception was at the Rendevous Café in Wigan and we honeymooned in Grange-over-Sands and I do remember that there wasn’t enough to eat in our hotel; my husband was a big hungry young man in those days.

He was a tailor by trade, but went into the RAF as a keep fit instructor. He went to Malta in 1942 where he remained until the end of the war. He told me the ship he was on was one the first get there and that the people of Malta were on the verge of starvation when they arrived. I still have some photographs and newspapers from his time in Malta that he gave me.

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