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This story has been added to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Marian Hatton and has been submitted to the site with her permission…

I was 16 and living in Appley Bridge when the war started I was one of eight children our dad worked at the linoleum factory and mum was far too busy looking after us all to go out to work

Mum was a good cook and in spite of the rationing I don’t remember ever going hungry. Of course clothes were rationed too and we used to hold lots of jumble sales and mum who was also a good sewer would alter things or make something else out of them. There wasn’t much in the way of make up, just a bit of Pond’s cream and a dab of lipstick. We gravy browned our legs and drew a pencil line up the back for a seam. Of course there were the Americans with their nylons and chocolate, but I was always a bit shy and wary of them.

For a start when I left school I worked for a while as a barmaid, but when I was 18, I had to go and work in munitions at Bradley Mill 7.30am to 7.30pm six days a week, making bullets for 303 rifles. I remember I only got £7 a week and worked very hard for it, although I have to say there was a good atmosphere in the factory and we had a lot of fun.

We had a large garden at the back of our house and we would go outside and watch the German planes fly over carrying bombs to drop on Liverpool. We could tell by the droning sound they made that they weren’t ours. Then we would see the flashes and hear the bangs as they dropped their bombs, then came the fires. Liverpool was heavily bombed.

It was quite difficult walking around in the blackout, and I had to be extra careful as we lived near to the canal, you wouldn’t want to fall in that, in the pitch black.

In 1944 the making of bullets was easing up and I was sent to Risley where they were making bombs, I didn’t like it there, but stayed until 1945.

I married in church in the February just before VE Day and we had to save our clothing coupons to buy the blue dress I wore, my sister who stood for me wore pink and I carried a small bouquet. My husband had worked down the pit from leaving school and as this was considered very essential work during the war was exempt from service.

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