- Contributed by听
- ateamwar
- People in story:听
- Anne Cosgrove. Featuring the girls in my section and my American penpals
- Location of story:听
- Automatic Telephones, Edge Lane, Liverpool
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A4120507
- Contributed on:听
- 26 May 2005
At the factory, we worked two weeks on nights and two weeks on days. My brother was in the Fire Service and cleaned the decks of Liberty ships in the Mersey. He brought a stack of U.S. magazines home and we wrote to a penpal column, and got lots of letters from lots of American troops. I wrote to 12! We passed many on as well. I have visited the last of them twice, in Miami and Ohio. Anna, from Miami came to England and she loves it here.
At the factory, we had to work through the May Blitz, ignoring the sirens. But if a plane came towards the factory, we had men on the roof, who signalled to us to go down to the bunkers. Sometimes this happened twice a night.
When I was on days, I went about with the A.R.P Warden, Mr Richardson, to help him. He was very nervous. One night a bomb fell at the top of our road, Winskill Road, as we told them, stay in until the morning, as theres some damage. Mr Richardson made a note, then the other bomb missed our house and fell on a home in Nettlestead Road, this was noted as well.
The King and Queen visited the factory one day and spoke to the big boss. The King seemed to have pink panstick makeup on! I had been told to stand still within my section.
The girls were great, they came in early every day and no one stayed off. We paid double tax to help the war.
Our pen pals were very kind, we got boxes of food and I still have snaps of a lot of them.
I am lucky to still have one very good friend, Anna, and her husband, Forest Klingman. We are still writing. When she came to England I took her to Chatsworth, Chester, Southport and Newbury (her ancesters). We stayed two nights in the 'Six Bells' and drove into Newbury so she could get the atmosphere of where her people had come from. So as well as helping the war effort, we got friends!
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