大象传媒

When I was 17 you had to do war work. I'd had a job as a children's nurse but they made me leave that. They put me in Joseph's factory on the Birmingham Road. We made bomb cases out of thick tin - we had to stitch them up. I sat next to a big tub of acid. They chucked the cases in there to seal them and the acid got onto my chest. After 6 months I had to leave. The doctor refused to treat me if I didn't leave that factory.

I went to work in Stratford emergency Hospital in Arden Street. They're not there anymore. I was in Bradley Ward. Each ward was named after somebody in the war. I had a great time, got to know all the fellows, soldiers, sailors, airmen, everyone wanting treatment. There were Italians, Americans, Australians, Norweigens, people from all over the world. Stratford was safe although it was so close to Coventry. We used to see the doodle bugs coming over. You never knew where they would fall.

At night I worked at the cinema. We didn't earn much money and father was a sick man. There were eight of us and my four brothers were in the army. They all came back which was lucky. One was wounded but it could have been a lot worse. I finished at the hospital at 6pm, had to be at the cinema at 7.30 and finished at 11 at night.

In 1945 I got married. My fella had been abroad for five years. He was in the Warwickshire Yeomanry. He was a desert rat. He came out as a seargeant major and when he came home he wanted to get married straight away but I didn't - I didn't know him, he'd been away 5 years. I have three children so it must have been alright, but we got divorced after 12 years. I'm 83 on Saturday 18th June and have two boys and a girl, my sons live in Stratford and my daughter in Leamington, and I have two grandchildren, a boy and a girl, and two great grandchildren, a boy and a girl too.

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