大象传媒

I was fifteen at the outbreak of WW2 and I lived on Devonshire Street, Chesterfield with my parents and brother. My brother was in the Territorial Army and so went off to war almost at the start. He was taken prisoner and held in one of the Stalag camps during the first year of war.
Until I was seventeen I worked in a local bakery but had to leave because I developed dermatitis. I was given the choice of working in the Land Army, one of the Forces or working in a munitions factory. I chose the munitions factory as this meant I was able to stay at home with my Mother as my Father had recently died.
I was sent to work in the munitions factory at Sheepbridge near Chesterfield. On the first day I was issued with a boiler suit and sent off for training. To my horror I found I was to be trained as an overhead crane driver. This was to prove hard to me as I am scared of heights. After a weeks training I started work in the 500lb bomb workshop.
The work involved lifting the cases and carrying them in piles of six to the workshop where they were to be filled. Thankfully I did not have to move the bombs once they were full! The days were long; I worked twelve hour shifts alternating between days and nights. These shifts were broken up by lunch breaks when we would listen to concerts broadcast during 鈥淲orkers Playtime鈥� a radio programme broadcast by the 大象传媒 to boost morale. On my days off I would go to the Hippodrome Theatre on Corporation Street to see shows or to The Victoria, Gaumont or Odeon Cinema to see a film.
However, back to work. One day my crane broke down and the foreman wanted me to climb out of my crane into the one at the side of me, of course my fear of heights prevented me from doing this. Eventually one of the men who drove the cranes in the 1000lb workshop next door walked along the gantry and climbed into my crane to rescue me and get the crane going again. Just like Rapunzel in her Ivory Tower I fell in love with my hero Fred Pardner and we were later married. Being a wartime marriage luxuries were few and far between but I borrowed a wedding dress from a friend and friends and families donated food for the reception. We were lucky and had a tin of Salmon a rare treat at that time; I also managed to get some eggs so we had a cake. Our honeymoon was spent staying with relatives in Wales.
Eighteen months after our wedding I was pregnant when Fred was called up to war, one month before our baby was due he went off to join the RAF. He did manage to come home on the day our daughter was born and I remember this was the very first time I had seen him in his uniform.
After that Fred went off to war and I spent the rest of the war at home looking after our
new daughter.

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