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I am Eveline Williams. I was Hughes before I got married. I married a Percy Williams. I’ll be 95 on February 4th 2006.
In 1939, I was carrying a baby. He was 12 months old on January 5th, and my husband was called up some time in the February. So that was 1941, when he was called up. And in 1942, I went and got a job in Marchwiel (at the munitions factory), on gun cotton, they called it. I didn’t take ill, I fainted. We used to push little wagons up to a deep thing, I forget what they call it, and we used to put the cotton wool.. it was like cotton wool with acid in.. and we had to put that in a big vat. The men used to tread on it. These things were like steel wagons, and they were nearly as tall as me. I’m not tall! I was there for a little while, and that’s when I say I fainted. They took me to the doctor, and he examined me thoroughly, so he said 'I’ll tell them you need a lighter job'. And then I went into what they called ‘The Room’. That was where they used to issue the uniforms. Little flannel things, you know. But I was only there for 9 months, and then my son got pneumonia. He was very very poorly. He wasn’t quite two.
My husband didn’t actually go abroad. When they examined him, he was due to go to France, but they found out that he’d only got one eye. He’d got what you call a lazy eye. So they kept him in this country. But he was in London, and all over the country. He was with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Then I had another little boy. My husband was away from the February until 1945. So he was away all that while, apart from when my little boy was very poorly, he was granted leave, because they didn’t expect him to live.
I had two brothers in the war. One went abroad, Ellis, I think he was in the marines. There was another brother, Trevor, but he had to be invalided out, I don’t know why.
They were hard times. I got paid one pound twelve and six pence a week to keep me and the two children, and I had to pay seven and six pence rent out of that. So I went three times a week, doing domestic, while my boys were in school. And they didn’t have school dinners then.

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