大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Nancy Bolton and added to the site with her permission.

I was 18years old when the war started, and before it started I had been doing just the ordinary things in life. Now, being 18years, I was old enough to either go into the Armed Forces, or work in a Munitions Factory. The thought of joining the Forces and leaving home was a bit daunting, as I had never been away from home before. So I decided to go into Munitions, working on Electrical Hydraulics in an Aircraft factory in Warrington.

I enjoyed the work, because I have always liked working with my hands. I stayed on Hydraulics for a while and then they put us to work on valves for Jet Engines, which must have been secretive because we were put into a separate room. There were four of us working in this room. We worked twelve hour days and nights, and being very young, I found it hard work. We enjoyed it though, had a lot of fun and exchanged a lot of banter.

There were a lot of Americans stationed nearby, at Burtonwood, and they taught us how to 鈥楯itter-bug鈥� and all the latest dances that were the craze at the time. They were all very nice, and my sister, who worked for the RAF at the Burtonwood base, got to know one or two of the Americans personally and they would say 鈥楥ome dancing with us to-night鈥�, and of course we went, but it was only as friends, and they were all very polite.

A time I will always remember was that on Valentines Day, (which wasn鈥檛 celebrated a lot in those days) two of our American friends turned up at our house with a beautiful cake shaped like a heart. Of course you couldn鈥檛 get hold of cakes during the war, but they had had this specially made for us at the Camp. Mum and Dad thought it was great of them to do it, and we all had it for tea.

These American friends also knew that I liked to knit and sew, and so they would bring me damaged silk parachutes, which was great, because I made silk underwear and lots of nice things from them. These were luxuries in those days. Also the parachute had lovely thick silk cords, which I would split and use them as silks to embroider table-cloths and things. I even tried dyeing them different colours, I still have one of the table-cloths I made from those lovely silks.

The Americans were very kind to us, but they never gave us any silk stockings, but I suppose they would have done if we had asked for them. As I have said, we were just friends, treating them like brothers. In fact I even wrote to the sister of one of them, who lived in North Carolina, to let her know how he was getting on. She was very grateful for that.

A friend of my sister, who had also worked in the Aircraft Factory, but was quite high up, decided to start a mans football team and actually bought the kits required. Once the team was established we used to have matches with other teams. On the Saturday nights after the matches, we used to go to the local pubs and have a real knees-up. It was good fun, in fact, that is where I met my future husband, he played in one of the football teams. He had been in the RAF, stationed in Egypt as a wireless operator. He was also in a Squadron that bombed Germany and took photographs of the areas and cities they bombed which were then put in a magazine called the 鈥楽phere鈥�. There was also a picture of him with 鈥楤omber Harris鈥�, who said to him, 鈥淲hat are you doing here lad? You look too young鈥�. At that time my future husband was only 18years old.

Later in the war, the crew he was with were doing a run over the Mediterranean when they were attacked and he was wounded in his chest and lost an eye. He was subsequently sent home and later came to work in the Aircraft Factory, and joined the football team.

We eventually got married and had one son. Unfortunately my husband died very young and I have been a widow for over thirty years. But you get over it and you have to get one with your life.

I do remember when they were bombing Manchester, not far from Warrington, we used to run and take shelter under a railway bridge and watch all the bright lights in the sky.

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