大象传媒

During the war my mother, Sally Smith worked shifts at the Moussec Champagne and Wine Company at Rickman's Worth. She used to come home very tired and never wanted to tell me how she had got on at work.

At the front of the factory there was a huge glass window and I used to watch them filling the bottles and putting in the corks and labelling them and packaging them. Although this was fascinating I always thought it was a strange thing. We were in the middle of a war - who could possibly want all this wine and champagne! It was never ending, they always seemed so busy!

A few years after the war ended I was talking to a man who used to work there and I decided to put my puzzling questions to him.

He gave me a knowing smile and told me the town's secret. There was never any wine or champagne there at all! It was all a big facade. The people I could see through the window came in everyday and filled bottles with water and corked them and packed them. The night shift emptied the crates and emptied the bottles ready for the day shift to start all over again!

Behind this facade was a tank factory! Everyday tanks were made there and shipped out in the dead of the night. I had watched through that window many a time and I never got so much as an inkling that anything else but bottling was going on! My mother worked there all the time and never said a word.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jacci Phillips of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Albert George Smith and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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