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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult education’s reminiscence team on behalf of Madge Smith and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

At the start of the war I was living in London and working as a bookkeeper’s assistant at a gentlemen’s outfitters. War broke out on the Sunday and we all had to do something for the war effort. My first job was in a munitions factory, winding cordite – I didn’t know what it was at the time! There was only one other lady in a room full of men, and we arranged to go together the next night because she lived near me. But she didn’t turn up at the bus stop and I didn’t want to work in that place as the only lady with all those men and all that explosive, so I didn’t go back.

After that I went on a milk round for Express Dairies, and had to deal with people’s ration coupons. I drove an electric vehicle which was uncovered and driven from the back, and I got pleurisy from being in the open. After that I went on the buses. I was based at Edmonton depot and to get to work was difficult in the morning as everything was blacked out and we had to be at work for 4 am. We just had to get there the best we could, and I rode my brother’s bicycle. One minute you’d be going along in the dark and the next you’d be on the floor because of black ice.

We had elderly drivers because most of the young ones had gone off to fight, and sometimes we would have accidents – early one morning we skidded into Finsbury Park and had a nasty accident. Fortunately there weren’t many passengers, just a few men making their way to work. It took the bus off the road and I had the rest of the day off as we didn’t have to continue with our duties.

Later I worked on the trolley buses which had a wire at the top. On one occasion going round Finsbury Park the pole came off the wire, so I told the driver, but he said he couldn’t put it back on because he couldn’t see, so I had to do it. But I managed, and we carried on. That was quite a regular thing, the pole coming off.

One weekend my husband was home on leave - he was a driving instructor in the London Fire Brigade teaching firemen to drive the American vehicles that were sent over. In the evening there was a terrific bomb in our area, and unfortunately the bomb caught a full bus at the top of our road, which was a very nasty incident. We just lost all our glass and that sort of thing but it was a terrible shock to be that close.

We used to look up and see planes in the sky and say ‘Oh, it’s alright, they’re ours’. And then suddenly the firing would start and we would all take cover. During raids we went down an Anderson shelter in our garden. There were also the big shelters in the roads in Palmer’s Green but I didn’t like to go in those. I would prefer to be under the stairs and go back to the bedroom when the raid was over. When the Doodlebugs came over I would lie in bed praying ‘Keep going, keep going’

My mother was living in Frinton at the start of the war and because of the threat of invasion along the coast she came to stay with us. But before too long she went home again as invasion seemed less likely.

The thing that struck us most when it was all over was how quiet it was. It seems a funny thing to say now but we had all got used to all the noise and bustle.

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