大象传媒

When war broke out I was only 18 and wanted to join the Women's Army with another girl. My mother was on her own and didn't want me to leave home so I went to Footmans factory where the car park at the back of M&S Ipswich now is. We were making shirts for the soldiers at Footmans and we girls used to write little notes and stitch them into the shirt tails - there weren't ever any replies!

From Footmans I went to Ransomes, Sims & Jeffries. I was on the centre lathe dusting bomb spigots and the end of the bombs. We didn't have a lot of training but we used to get timed on the job. I always remember this one girl who found a quicker way to do it - she wasn't very popular. We had a little shelter near our bay for air raids.

At home we had an air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden. My brother was 15 months younger than me and he wouldn't go down in the shelter, he just stayed in the house. When he was about 18 he was called up for the army and was stationed in Germany. We lived in Whitton, on Church Lane near Claydon. I cycled to work. It took about 20 minutes. Outside that lane they built council houses right at the beginning of the war. Before the houses were let to village people they were taken over by soldiers of the Middlesex Regiment temporarily until the soldiers were assigned their postings. We used to go dancing with the soldiers at Barham. We girls got rides on the backs of the soldiers motorbikes to go to Barham. Where we went dancing had been a workhouse originally. The men in the workhouse had to walk onto the next workhouse every day, several miles - this was to keep them active. The soldiers used the buildings until nearly the end of the war then the villagers could live there. These estates were built all around Ipswich.

I met my husband-to-be Charles, at Ransomes. He was on a capston lathe, back to back from me. It was so noisy, if we wanted to talk with each other we had to wave to someone who would bang on the machines to get the other one's attention. One day heasked me if I'd go to the Hippodrome Theatre with him - he had already bought the tickets. The Hippodrome was at the bottom of Silent Street. After the war it became a bingo hall for a while.

We were married at Whitton Church on April 26th 1943 in the midst of the war. My mother made my wedding dress. She made the wedding cake too. It was chocolate because she couldn't get icing sugar. My 2 sons were born at Brook Street nursing home. David the first in 1944 and the second in 1946. They put me upstairs in the nursing home because I was light and they said it would be easier to carry me down if there was an air raid. Fortunately there were no raids at those particular times.

I am always called Dot because I weighed just over 3 lbs when I was born and someone said 'why she's only a dot on the palm of your hand'! I waited seven years and then I had two daughters after the war, in 1953 and 1956.

At rationing we had to queue up especially for sausages. The two boys as babies during the war got cod liver oil and orange juice with auxillary rations.

Doodle-bug bombs started coming. You'd hear them but you couldn't tell just when they would stop. They came straight over and then when the motor cut out they dropped suddenly and exploded. One night were were outside and we could hear the doodle-bugs coming. I was so frightened that I just leapt over the fence in the front garden but our shelter was in the back. They kept coming but I did get across to the neighbour's shelter.

I left Ransomes a fortnight before David was born in 1944, after that I was kept busy with the two boys. David is 61 now!

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