大象传媒

During the war I worked at the Forge, part of the ironworks in Ironville, Derbyshire. I was an overhead crane driver working with hot iron and mainly a male workforce. In all of the years that I worked there I never heard an indecent or swear word from any of them. There was a rail track that ran through the iron works where the iron was brought in.

There used to be two doors in the roof of the building, specially designed to let the rising heat out. When the air raid sirens went off a fitter would climb onto my crane and I would have to manoever the crane with him on it up high, to close the roof doors so that the Germans could not see the light inside. I had to move the crane very steadily as one wrong move from me and the fitter would have fallen to his death. Then we would all go outside to watch the bombing raids on Nottingham as we had a good view of the city.

We used to work shifts at the forge, 6am-2pm 2pm-10pm & 10pm-6am, we also used to work every third weekend; Saturday afternoons and all day sundays. I was paid a set wage of about fifteen pounds a week, the men were paid on tonnage.

I remember that we used to get scrap iron at the forge, especially that which had been created by bomb raids in the area, sometimes it used to have flesh and blood or hair still attached to it. We would put it in the furnace then it went into rollers and it would then be rolled into iron bars. Before anything could be done to it, though a big machine with shears on it used to cut the iron up into smaller peices. Before it went to the furnace.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.