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Mavis Richards was a Clerk in Derby Health Office, acted as a secretary to a man who was organising Air Raid Precautions, and was herself in the ARP: she did not take it on voluntarily, but it was expected because she was in the Health Department. She gave up ARP work in 1942 when she went to work at Rolls Royce and had the long tiring journey to Belper.

After she was married, Mavis had to leave the Welfare Office as married women were not allowed to go on working there. So she then went and worked at Rolls Royce in a drawing office, which dealt with Aero engine modifications. Once a Spitfire crashed and was found not to have had its engine modified. Her office were relieved when they found that the mods had been marked on the drawings. After the war Mavis became in charge of this Section, though she said she had never understood what she was doing. Mavis left this job in 1946. Some of this work was done at Belper and entailed leaving home in the dark and returning in the dark, and her health suffered.

Daytime bombing was unusual. When there was the daytime raid at Rolls Royces, the plane flew round a bit first, very low down, and MR thought it was British. Then it flew over the house and dropped bombs on Royces. The siren had gone, but by this time they had become blase, and didn't bother going to the shelter. At the time they had a new airman (from the Canadian Air Force who had come for a course at Royces) who rushed out to the shelter in a great panic when he heard the bomb drop. Once her fiance George Johnston gave Mavis a glass fruit bowl. An air raid came so she put the bowl under the stairs and then went back to bed.

During the war Mr James (the father of a school friend who ran a shop) gave Mavis some eggs to take home after a visit. She set off on a bus, but the siren went almost immediately so the bus stopped and the passengers were turned off as was normal. It was a long way to walk, and there were shell splinters raining down, and she worried about egg getting on her new coat if they were hit by shell splinters

She watched the bombing of Coventry from her bedroom window in Derby — there was a huge red glow in the sky, and also that of Sheffield and Manchester.

(as told to her son in 1989)

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