大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Simon Harris and has been added to the website on behalf of Eileen Batley with her permission abd they fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

Having just returned to Rainham from a hard evacuation experience in South Wales, I started my working life in a kitchen at nearby Chatham Docks in 1942. I had an early start to my day and it was very scary going to work in the blackouts.

I started at 6.30am by scrubbing floors and helping to prepare the vegetables. Later I would scrub out the big iron pans that were used for cooking stews. As if the heavy nature of the work were not enough I can also remember pieces of metal coming off the pans and getting stuck behind my finger nails. This was very painful.

After a while I stopped working at Chatham docks and travelled with my mother, younger brother and sister to join my father in Durban, South Africa.

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