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This story was added to the People’s War website by D.G. Schofield on behalf of Muriel Ragless, who has given her permission to add her story to the website and understands the terms and conditions.

I was born in 1926 in Southampton an only child and spent most of my childhood years in Fareham. My mother died when I was 12 years old of cancer, my Father was in the Royal Navy so seldom home, it was left too various neighbours and one kind aunt to care for me at a time when I really needed comforting. I remember countless hours spent in air raid shelters on the outbreak of war in 1939 and kind folk giving me food and drink. I remember always wearing woollen gloves, my hands being permanently frozen, nerves I guess.

At fourteen I left school. ‘One’ left school aged fourteen in those days and it was decided that I should go into domestic service. I had been staying in Cooksbridge, Sussex, and my first job was in Haywards Heath for the Right Honourable Miss Pakenham who professed to be a descendant of the Late Duke of Wellington. My position was a "Tweeny" (or between maid) which was the polite name for scullery maid. One was then elevated to kitchen maid and trained by the cook. I was elevated fairly promptly as the staff were being conscripted into the armed forces.

One night as I was taking a can of hot water upstairs for her Ladyship, she slept in a four-poster bed with a hipbath at the bottom of it. I never did find out if she used it, staff did not gossip then, for fear of losing one's job! There was no hot water or upstairs toilets in those days! As I was walking up the stairs there was an almighty crash and chaos reigned. Air raids were becoming continuous as bombers flight path to London passed directly over us.

A land mine had dropped on the adjoining recreation ground about 150 yards from our boundary causing our glass roof to shatter and debris to fall on our landing where I was standing. I was hit in the face by flying glass and had to go to hospital to have a shard removed from my lip. Fortunately the land mine did not explode, just remained bedded in the ground until such time it was defused and rendered safe or I would not be telling this story. Needless to say, I am going back 65 years so I doubt there are few, if any of these folk still alive. I left Sussex in 1941 and came to Surrey, so it really is all past history.

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