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I had eight sisters and two brothers, but my sisters in the First World War were Land Army so I hardly ever saw them. When my Father died, my Mother was left with us the three youngest- aged 10, 11 and 12. That’s how we came from Suffolk to London — to live with my brother who was a London Bus Driver. We later went to live in Friar Close, London.

I was about 26 when war broke out. I was working in Selfridges in London then, and I volunteered for War Work, so I went up to Westbury in Shropshire with my sister to do gardening but I didn’t think I was doing enough war work so I went back to London. I travelled by train, and had to go on the underground - I hated it down there!

I went into a Halifax bomber factory making Halifax Bombers. I worked along with lots of other people — hundreds of people- it was a very big factory.

It was a very frightening time, I lived in lodgings at the back of Hendon Aerodrome and they had a flying bomb hit them - killing 500 people. It frightened me to death! They only had that one bomb though - luckily.

We had to get up very early in the morning for work, and we had long days — it was hard work and very dirty.

The actual building where I worked was a glass-roofed factory where they made these bombers so whenever these flying bombs came over we had to go into the shelters, and they came over quite frequently so we spend a lot of time in the shelters; it was very frightening. They’d just stop, and you didn’t know where they were going to fall. (As a matter of fact I was in bed when one flying bomb stopped. I got my tin hat on — in bed!)

I had to be a semi-skilled fitter for 6 months — we did all sorts of drillings and filings. I then worked on the engines and the spars and they had planes coming that had been damaged and we had to repair them — some of them were in a pretty bad state, but we always knew what to do to fix them.

The lodgings were very big rooms holding many people, but I lived in a bed-sit (I just a bedroom to myself— everything else was shared) so I had to feed myself. They’d got little garden plots, so I used to go down there and spend time there. We had mostly vegetables in the plot during wartime to supplement our meals as the food was generally pretty bad — I just about lived on salad I think.

We didn’t really go out or anything while we were there. In the evenings I would do a lot of sewing and dress-making. I made blouses out of curtains and sheets during the war, also a red coat out of a woolly blanket - it was a lovely coat; anything I could do to make do and mend. I had a few items made out of parachute silk.

After that I went back to Westbury where I married in the little church there and later had a son (Colin) who’s 60 this year. I got married during the War but my husband was in the Air force. Then he was disabled with awful arthritis, so I’m a war widow.

My wedding service was at 8 o’ clock in the morning: an early one. I made my own wedding dress. There wasn’t much else though. I remember the Parson — he was very old, and he walked all the way up from Westbury up to Polesgate where I was living, and I didn’t even ask him inside after the poor thing had walked all that way!

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Olga Mason and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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