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When the war started and I got to the age where I had to do something like munitions or be called up, I said no. My father was a long distance lorry driver, he had his own business driving his own lorries and used to go away for days and nights, so my mother was on her own a lot and she suffered from arthritis. So I stayed at home in Hull and cycled backwards and forwards to Armstrong’s in Beverley because I decided to go on munitions there.

First I was drilling shock absorbers, and after a while I went on shift work and started cutting for shells, then moving on to another machine. I stayed there until I was married. Then I went back for a while because I still had to do something, and me husband being agricultural he was at home doing land work, growing vegetables of all description and corn and so on. Eventually I left to have my first baby.

I used to cycle from Hull to Beverley, from Sutton Road, Beverley High Road, to Armstrong’s in Beverley twice a day, going home from work in the morning and then back again. I cycled in the dark many times to be there by 6 in the morning. You had to have a lamp that was sort of shielded and showed a glimmer on the road. It was a bit scary at some times but I got by all right.

There were some air raids and we had to go the shelters when I was at work, but I didn’t bother when I was at home — I said no, I was going to die in bed if it came to that. There was one bad air raid when me mother said I would have to go in the shelter but I wouldn’t go, so I laid under the table which was pushed over to the sideboard. Me mother was laid there as well and me father was at the back door watching. He said there was a bomb coming down and it knocked 4 houses down 3 doors away from us. All our windows and ceilings came in and it was a bit scary, but it still didn’t make me go to the air raid shelter!

My husband worked for his father in agriculture, with their own market garden growing vegetables of all descriptions; cauliflowers, sprouts, cabbages, leeks, everything really, and he had greenhouses for tomatoes. He was told what to grow by the agriculture ministry but they did little bits on their own. They had a good reputation for growing vegetables. So I had plenty of work to do helping in the fields after I left Armstrong’s to have my babies.

It was all hand-work then, we only got one tractor in the early stages — it was very old fashioned, when Fergusons first came out. Me husband used to drive it up and down the field ploughing and I followed weeding, spring onions and radishes and so on, on hands and knees.

We more or less got all the vegetables, ‘cos they weren’t rationed like the meat. We only had a certain amount of sugar and fats and you just had to eke it out and make do. We got a small tin of corned beef once a month, or fish. There was plenty of fish if the fish man could get round on his petrol ration. We didn’t go hungry, and I don’t think anybody really did, a lot of people grumbled but I think they were grumbling for grumbling’s sake.

For clothes you had to use your coupons and you had to eke it out. You had to have the same coupons for curtains as well as your clothes, so if you used them for curtains you didn’t have enough for your clothes. I used to make loads of my own clothes, many a time I’d go to the Beverley market and buy enough material to make the dress that took fewest coupons. I used to think who can I cadge some coupons from. Me dad might let me have one or two but he’d want some shirts too.

Leconfield Aerodrome and Beverley Barracks meant we weren’t short of men and we used to have some really good nights out. Drink was very short. They used to have their own bar and you needed documents for the drink. We used to get a pass out from the ballroom and go to the station ‘cos you could get drinks there and then go back to the ballroom. We rode our bikes home. We had good times really.

One Sunday afternoon I went to me aunty’s when me uncle was on duty. We were sat in the garden and the air raid sirens went, so we picked our pots up and went in. We were having a cup of tea and heard this droning, and there was aircraft going over and we could see the fighters coming up from Leconfield ready to go at them.

Then all of a sudden we went in the front room and I was looking through the window and saw an aircraft that was so low I thought it was coming down but it wasn’t. It was a German fighter coming right down the middle of Grovehill Road. I could see the pilot and everything. Me uncle called and said how silly we were, if he’d turned the machine guns on we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Do you know I can see that as though it was yesterday. He went straight down the centre of Grovehill — he might have been looking for the shipyard or the barracks.

When an air raid siren went the air raid wardens had to bustle everybody together and get them into the shelters. As soon as the aircraft came over you could hear our fighters going up from Leconfield. Near where I lived there was a searchlight and an anti-aircraft gun.

We used to go to Armstrong’s recreation room or Hodgsons’ ballroom for dancing, it was 2s10d a ticket, and if there was any special dances I used to bike from me mothers to me aunty’s on Grovehill Road with all me rollers in, this was before I was married, then take me rollers out and do me hair at my aunty’s.

When I got married in 1944, I had to scoot round to different people for coupons. I had a suit — a dress and a jacket, and something that I could wear after. I had a few flowers, carnations I think, just a small bouquet because it was so expensive. My mother made the cake, she went to me mother-in-law and me aunty then and asked for some spare fruit. They were a bit short all together but me father-in-law knew a grocer and he got us some extra.

A lot of people had chickens so we always had eggs, my mother-in-law had chickens, and she used to breed rabbits. My husband built rabbit cages all round, and they had a doe and a male and they kept mating them so they always had some rabbits there. My husband used to kill the rabbits, and skin them, cut them up and stew them. They were keen shooters too and they used to go out and shoot them. So we always had meat pies with potatoes on the top. They often used to go round the field for the pheasants and shoot them too. So we didn’t go short of meat.

I always washed my clothes myself, we had an old fashioned fire copper in the corner of the washhouse, and me husband used to fill it on the night and light the fire before he went to work the next morning, and I used to keep filling it up as I needed. I had an old fashioned mangle with wooden rollers.

My father had his own haulage business, driving his own lorry. There were 5 of them that loaded up from Leconfield with bombs to go down to Portsmouth. They could only travel so many mph, all with their own lorries and a military despatch rider in between them so they didn’t get too close or go too fast. They all had a certain weight of bomb to be loaded onto the ships. Sometimes my father would be away for 10 days going from one base to another.

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