大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancsomeguard on behalf of Doris Springall and added to the site with her permission.

I was fourteen when the war started and had just left school. I lived here in Edgeside, Waterfoot with my parents. My mother ws a sample worker in the slipper works and my dad was a gardener for the slipperworks owners. My first job was in the slipperworks but then I went to Waring and Gillows - they made camouflage nets and tents at Clough Fold. We thought that if I did that I wouldn't have to go away - but it didn't work.

I had to enrol at eighteen and I was given various options. I wouldn't have minded the Forces but I didn't want to join the Land Army because I didn't like cows. In the end I worked for GEC in Shaw and lived in a hostel in Mumpsbridge. We were with a lot of girls from Liverpool - there were about sixty of us altogether. There were Americans billeted across the road and the Pay Corps and there was lots of dancing. I went home every weekend and I must say that though there was a war on, it never bothered me.

There was rationing but I don't remember ever being hungry. We were fed at the hostel and in this part of the world people kept chickens and rabbits - my dad even kept ducks - but I didn't like duck eggs.

At work we assembled valves for radar on aircraft and made big cathode ray tubes. We were just welders - we weren't very clever - we just did our little bit then passed it on to someone else.

I lived from one weekend to the next - when I got home I'd hear who was on leave and who wasn't. After the war ended my cousn's friend, who had written to me when he was in the desert came up to see me, and we got married. I lived in Kent for 38 years then came back here in 1985. I liked it down south but I'm glad I came back.

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