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‘I’m going to apply over at the Dockyard’ I said. So they said ‘Do you think you’ll get in there?’ I said ‘Yes, certainly I will, I’ll try anyway’, and I got in with flying colours.

I worked in the naval stores. There were all different departments in the naval stores, and then they put me on American Lease Land Tools — I was in charge of that. I saw all the boats come in, saw them come in with the sailors.

I was one of the last women during the war to come out of the Dockyard, I was going around with a sailor at the time, he was on one of the LTC boats and one of the boats brought in a large chicken. So, one of the girls, not unbeknown to me, wrote a note on it ‘Gee, mighty tough, all the way from Texas’.

Well, I got through anyway. The Dockyard gave me that chicken, and I had cigarettes around my waist. My mother said ‘You’ll get in trouble one of these days’, so I said ‘I won’t, some of them take more than me mother, this is only a couple of packets. I don’t take them; I have them given to me’. Well, you weren’t supposed to bring them out.

I know my brother worked on the tugs in the Dockyard, and he was pulling a barge with all the ammunition on, and the wire also caught him in the stomach. He went back to Torpoint, said he wasn’t feeling very well, so he came home. My sister was there — she was married but her husband was away in the Navy. She said ‘What’s the matter Stan?’ ‘Oh, I’ve got terrible pains’ he replied. So, he went upstairs to bed, and then called down ‘Come up here a minute, and bring up a bucket’ - of course blood came out. It turned out he had perforated kidneys and was nearly a goner.

I lived at Clearbrook Avenue, St.Budeaux; my mother was a widow - my father died. We had one of the best shelters going —my brothers dug it right down. We had to go down six steps to get to the shelter. There were bunk beds there, which they had made for us, and of course my mother was getting on. I was in the shelter one day when an air raid sounded, and was looking at the door but was told to ‘Get back in to the air raid shelter!’, because we had about three or four feet to get into the entrance, that’s how my brothers’ built it. So, I was there and a bomb fell — I thought my arm was blown off. The blast took the door from my arm, and I could feel it. I saw the planes going over — it was terrible!

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