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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Anne Wareing on behalf of Joyce Haworth and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was 13 and in the last year at school when war started. I remember deep snow that Christmas and the soldiers, who were using the church school as a canteen, having to dig us out.

When I left school I first worked in a dress shop, I worked very long hours 8.30am to 8.30pm, 6 days a week all for the princely sum of 7/6d. Six months later I caught mumps and I remember Uncle Rob coming home on leave from the army and saying he hoped he could catch them from me, so he could stay home longer with his wife and two small children. Both my uncles had joined up one in the army and the other in the marines, my cousin was in the Lancashire Fusiliers and he was later to be evacuated from Dunkirk.

After I recovered from the mumps I didn’t want to go back to the shop so I went into the mill, weaving was classed as essential war work, so I didn’t have to go and work in munitions. I got 15 shillings a week in the mill; much better pay. One of my duties at the mill was to fire-watch overnight with three other people, we had buckets of sand and a bucket and stirrup pump. We had to practice with these and also learn first aid in case there was a fire. I dread to think how we would have coped, faced with a big blaze. Thank goodness we weren’t.

I met my future husband at a dance in 1941, he was in the RAF Commandos, and they invaded Sicily and North Africa. He came home safely then went to Italy and then to India. We married in 1947, clothes were still on the ration, lace, though wasn’t, so I got married in white lace.

I can remember the bomb dropping at Stubbins one night and going to see if everyone was all right. I was at a party one night in Tottington with friends from work when we heard a flying bomb coming, it sounded like a train whistling overhead, we saw the flash, followed by a large explosion. Not being far from Manchester, at night we could see the bombs dropping there, it was terrifying thinking about the poor people who were in it.

Sadly my cousin and Uncle Rob were both killed when they came back to Europe, cousin Charles was killed in Holland and Uncle Rob in France.

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