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I’m Ethel Mountfield, and I’m 92. I was born in 1913, the year before the First World War.
The only thing I remember about the First World War is my mother putting me to sit on the arm of the sofa. She said ‘You sit on the arm of that sofa. You’ll see all the men coming back in their uniforms.’ And I did see them all coming back. And that’s the most memory I have of the First World War.
At the time of the Second World War I was married. My husband and I listened to the wireless, saying ‘We are at war with Germany’, and then you had to face it. We even had a bomb dropped on the piece of ground by us, in Rossett near Wrexham. In the piece of wasteland. And my husband, my first husband, was working nights. He was a fire watcher. And he nearly had a fire in his own place! And I had a baby too. She’s now 65, not a baby any more, more like an old age pensioner!
I was frightened. I was terribly nervous, every time I heard the siren going. You’d put your clothes over your head, wouldn’t you? Rather than listening to them. But of course the little baby didn’t know anything about it. But, still, we’re still here.
In Rossett, and Wrexham, it was terrible, queuing for your food. I used to take the pram on the train, to Wrexham, and my mother lived on the lane by the Wrexham football field, and I used to leave the pram and the little dog there, and go and stand and queue for ages, to get food. You’d queue for anything you could get really, as long as you could be fed. I wouldn’t like to think I was going to live through another one. I don’t remember much of the First, as I was only one when it started, wasn’t I? So I remember a bit of the First, and more of the Second.
When you think about what we went through.. It was a long time before we got back to normal, with the rationing and everything. But then things did get better.

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