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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Morwenna Nadar of CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ LONDON on behalf of Mrs Joyce Harriden (nee Whalebelly) and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

It was 1942 and my 18th birthday was approaching when I received an official notification stating that the clerical work I was doing did not contribute to the war effort and that therefore I had to change my job to nursing or factory work.

Since both my father and my boyfriend (later my husband) were in engineering and I didn’t like the sight of blood, I chose factory work, and spent the next 4 months at a Training Centre in Waddon, Surrey, learning the basic elements of manufacturing metal parts. This included drilling, filing, heat treatment, soldering and burnishing.

After completing the training, two friends (one from Redhill and one from Brighton) and I were placed in a factory in Harlesden in North London, and accommodation was found for us in the same locality.

The first night in our new residence we had just gone to bed when the air-raid warning siren sounded. The ‘lady of the house’ suggested we should join the family in the Anderson shelter but as we had never previously found it necessary to go into a shelter, we thought, ‘Why now?’ It was not long before there was the sound of nearby heavy explosions. We quickly changed our minds so it was ‘Shelter, here we come’ and we ran to it! They had not told us that there was an anti-aircraft gun virtually at the end of the garden!

During another raid a few days later, a piece of shrapnel fell through the roof and pierced the water storage tank in the attic. This meant that fires, the only form of heating in the house, could not be used.

Staying in such a location was not a good idea, so arrangements were quickly made for us to live with my auntie in Watford, where we could have nights of peaceful sleep, and travel to Harlesden each day.

I enjoyed working in the factory and gaining experience of shaping metal by using different machines. We used lathes for round features, presses for forming, and mills for flat features.

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