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This story was submitted to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War site by Wymondham Learning Centre on behalf of Mrs Pleasance and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Single women were conscripted into one of the three armed forces during World War Two, whereas married women, without children, were generally drafted into factories, i.e. Work of National Importance. I came under the latter category although, in my case, I forestalled being directed by presenting myself to the local firm of Redwings (a Canadian-based company) manufacturing aircraft components, where I was taken on and placed in the Stores section.
Just a ten-minute walk to and from my flat and, as the firm’s canteen was housed at its main factory, about a mile in the opposite direction, I found it more convenient to go home for my one-hour lunch break.
My midday meal would be possibly a slice of toast with dried egg scrambled, which if too runny I would thicken with bread crumbs, or perhaps a sliver of corned beef from my twopennyworth weekly ration. On Mondays it would be a small batter pudding left over from Sunday’s dinner, warmed through and spread with jam or syrup. Then, again, I may have indulged myself with a snoek salad (snoek was tinned fish, something in the nature of tuna.)
I recall one day sitting down to a bowl of boiled rice which I had livened up with a spoonful of strawberry jam. Halfway through this repast I suddenly came upon a big black spider doing the breaststroke right there in the middle of my rice! More feared of spiders than of Hitler’s bombs, I dropped my spoon in panic and dashed out on to the landing. After some minutes trying to steady my nerves I warily returned to the kitchen. I was half hoping the spider would have taken itself off but, if it had, where would it be now? Gingerly I approached the table, my knees trembling and my hands sweating. The blasted thing was still there, playing dead, as these crafty little creatures do. I cautiously gave it a poke with my spoon, bracing myself to spring back if it so much as moved an eyelid. Then the truth dawned … it wasn’t a spider at all — just the hull off the top of a strawberry. What a relief!
I think I should describe my flat, which was no more than two attic rooms, each about the size of a large cupboard, the top floor of a three-storey Victorian house. It was impossible to stand up straight in one half of each room owing to the slope of the ceiling. My sink, with just the one cold tap, was four stairs down in a recess on the landing. I shared bathroom and toilet facilities with the tenant of the flat below mine. The rent was 7s.6d. per week, inclusive of rates, and it was my piece of heaven. I furnished it with second-hand table and chairs but afforded a new double bed which cost £4.10s. I paid off so much a week before taking delivery.
Now to get back to my job. I spent some eighteen months in the cold, draughty, cheerless stores, progressing from counting components to typing requisitions, thence as a pseudo-secretary to the Assistant Stores Manager — a big fat slob of a man who, though a sergeant in the Home Guard, lived in daily fear of being called up for active service.
About this time, to add to my restlessness, a War Office telegram arrived informing me that my husband, who I knew was in action in Italy, had been reported missing, presumed taken prisoner of war. This news decided me to make a move. I approached to Personnel manager to request a transfer to the main factory and this, to my relief, was granted.
My first job on leaving school was in a printing works but this was a totally different ball game. It was engineering in its purest sense. I took to the smell of oil and hot metal like a duck to water. The noise and bustle, the shouting above the hum of machinery and, mostly, the good humour and camaraderie was just the tonic I needed to lift me out of the doldrums.
I reported to Jim Burt, foreman of the backstay shop (not making corsets but bomber wheel housings). A kindly, quietly spoken man, he introduced me to the chap who would be my ‘Operator’ — I would become his ‘Mate’, strictly in engineering terms! His name was Steve. A large teddy-bear, he treated me with great respect and we got along famously. In our shop there were a dozen each of operators and mates and what an assorted bunch we were.
The work was hard, the hours long, more often than not a seven-day week — overtime was compulsory. But, a big plus was the subsidised canteen where a reasonable meal for day and night shifts could be enjoyed for sixpence. We earned good bonuses on a system whereby what ever hours we saved on any operation counted as extra money. The timings for these jobs were assessed by ‘Rate fixers’ - a hated breed of factory worker.
Women operators had to wear wrap-around long-sleeved overalls — we bought our own so any colour was acceptable — and protective headgear, women mostly wore shoulder-length hair with the front and sides clipped up into fashionable swirls. The snood, a cotton hairnet with ribbon threaded through to tie on top, was all the rage. My mother was kept busy with her crochet hook turning these out by the dozen. I had several different coloured snoods, which were, of course, acceptable for factory wear.

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