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This story has been submitted to the People’s War site by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Ruby Watkins and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was born in 1924 and was 15 living near Bishop Auckland County Durham when war broke out.

I worked in a massive factory that made soldiers and eventually over the years I learnt the whole process of making them, working on the different departments.

Most nights we would hear the sirens going off and see the searchlights lighting up the sky. We learned to recognize the sound of the German planes overhead as opposed to ours, they made a sort of droning sound.

Everywhere at night was pitch black in the blackout and what vehicles there were such as buses had dipped headlights with covers over them. It was difficult to find your way as there were no street signs, so that had we been invaded the Germans wouldn’t have known where they were or at least that was the thinking behind it.

Once a week I would go to the cinema with a girl friend and the seats were 3d or 6d depending on where you sat. Sweets of course were on ration so we would cut up carrots or soak peas and take them in a bag with us for a snack. Most things were on ration such as jam and soap and we had coupons for almost everything. We didn’t use make up, but I can remember putting a bit of lipstick on and gravy browning my legs. You had to get a friend to draw the seam up the back with a pencil. On Saturday nights there was the sixpenny hop and we would go carrying our gold dance shoes in a brown paper bag. We made most of our clothes, as they were in short supply often using black out material to make skirts and parachute silk to make blouses and dresses.

Many sad things happened in the war, I had a cousin who was seventeen and a half and living in Newcastle, I was eighteen at the time. I think he had a bit of a thing for me and I for him. He came down from Newcastle to see me and we went with my friend Jean to see her mother’s grave in a country churchyard. Little did I know then that they were soon both to be killed, Jean was accidentally hit by an army wagon and killed and Jim was shouting and booing at a German plane as it was leaving after bombing Newcastle, when it dived low, firing machine gun bullets, killing him outright. A very sad memory.

But life moves on and I met my boyfriend Arthur Simpson Watkins who was in the army where he was working with a searchlight party. We were married in church in 1944, I wore a blue two- piece with a spray of roses and a navy hat, I had saved clothing coupons and traveled to Darlington for the fabric and had it made by a professional dressmaker. My sister stood for me and she wore green. My cousin gave me away and I was so nervous and eager to get married that we landed up the aisle before the vicar had arrived in front of the altar. Arthur had had an accident and got married with a broken leg, his uniform trousers covering his pot leg, however he couldn’t do anything about the plaster on his foot, so the photographer blacked it out on the photograph. We had our reception at home and the one tier cake had cut up prunes in it instead of currants, which of course you couldn’t get hold of. The family, friends and neighbours threw confetti at us made from real rose petals they had collected from their gardens.

One of my strongest memories of the war though was the comradeship and how everyone helped one another in any way they could.

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