´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

When the war stared I was 14 and working at Waterlow’s in Dunstable. I was paid about £2 per week — good money in those days. Then I found out that Bagshaw’s needed war workers so I went there, fitting chains for tank tracks. It was a skilled job; we had to oil and bang the chain links into each other. I then worked in the stores and carried out inspections.

Being employed in a reserved occupation you weren’t allowed to join up so I joined the Training Corps. We trained in the evenings in the school playground and went camping over the weekends in Totternhoe, and had a great time staying in a farm there. On Sundays we‘d march into church. My sister joined the corps but was flung out! She wouldn’t do as she was told!

I lived with my parents and sister. Dad’s sister had died, leaving a baby and she lived with us as well. We also had five Irishmen billeted with us all through the war — they worked at Bagshaw’s but they never spoke about what they did. My Dad was in the Home Guard and carried out fire watching duties in the old police station at the bottom of Friars Walk. I met my fiancé when I was 18 in the Queens Head Hotel in St Mary’s Street; soon afterwards he was shipped out to Burma.

Dunstable had some very nice shops during the war; I bought a lovely gold lame wedding dress in West Street. My mother’s relatives were older than me so I was given a lot of hand-me down clothing.

We used to gather herbs. We took them to the herbalist where the Quadrant Shopping Centre is now and got paid a very small amount of money for a lot of hard work! For entertainment we went to the cinema at the Picture Palace in High Street North. In another smaller cinema we saw the Crazy Gang and other films.

At the end of the war, all of us in the Training Corps went along to the Totternhoe church and rang the bells! It was really hard work!

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.