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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 Violet Bennett and has been added to the site with her permission….

I come from a military family all of them were regular servicemen. I was working at English Electric in Bradford in a reserved occupation, but was determined to go into the ATS. I kept applying until at last they let me go, so in 1944 at the age of seventeen and a half I finally joined.

I went to Pontefract in Yorkshire for six weeks training and then to Chilwell in Nottingham where in due course I was promoted to Corporal.

Nottingham holds a yearly Goose Fair, which we all enjoyed. I made a lot of friends and although I didn’t drink, we would to go from one pub to another as the beer was rationed and the boys liked a pint or two.

One very sad event I recall was I was in charge of a platoon of girls and we were walking down the hill from Big Sandhurst. It was during winter a cold, snowy, icy day. I looked up the hill to see a lorry parked at the top, suddenly start to slide down the hill towards us. It plowed into us injuring quite a few of us. I got the Medical Officer immediately and the injured were taken to be treated, the rest of us had to go straight back to work, that was how it was in war- time.

I was de-mobbed in 1947, I had wanted to stay on, but as as most of my friends were leaving I decided to do also, so I went back to the English Electric.

There were good things and bad things during the war, and I have kept in touch with some of the friends I made.

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