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Dorothy Clothier-her story
Dorothy Clothier was 15 when war was declared in 1939. She was the second child of a family of four children. Her grammar school education was halted by the war. She married Stanley Alfred Sullivan, who also worked at the Royal Small Arms Factory, in June 1943. He died in 1980 and she was married again, in 1985, to Roy Anderson who had served in the Merchant Navy on the trans-Atlantic convoys during the war.

In the thick of it, working at the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield.
From November 1939 until 1944 I was employed in the civil service as a Wages Clerk/Calculator Machinist at the Royal Small Arms Factory. Since it was vital that everyone was paid on Fridays, during air raids we took work with us into the shelters and often worked late into the night on Thursdays to get everything done. Being a place where arms are manufactured, this factory was an obvious target for German bombers.

The Clothier family
At home my elder brother, Victor Clothier, went into the Royal Air Force and was sent to America to train to be a pilot. On return he was chosen to be a Flying Instructor and teach new recruits.
My father,Herbert Clothier, was called up for service, also in the RAF, as a driver in the Air Sea Rescue Corps. He served in Europe, particularly Belgium and Holland in the latter years of the war.
I was forced to leave school as all exams for that year were cancelled.
My mother, younger brother and sister and I remained together in London. Initially my mother had thought to have the two younger ones evacuated to the countryside. However my sister was distressed by the proposal, and went around telling everyone that her mum did not love her anymore and she was being sent away. This changed my mother's mind and she decided that we would stay togeher in London and take what came together.
In addition to my full-time job, I took over maintaining my father's allotment and growing fresh vegetables for the family.
The rations introduced at the beginning of the war were very meagre. Our main meal was soup made from bone broth and vegetables. Bread was not white anymore but grey.Our meat ration of 1s 2d per week was mainly used on a weekend joint. Meat once a week was normal throughout the war.
I have since learnt from a London hospital dietician that our wartime diet was one of the best we could have.

Being attacked from above.
Air raids were often at night. At the beginning of the war my father and brother dug-in an Anderson shelter in the garden and we would go into that, carrying our gas masks and identity cards, when the warning sounded.
After the raids there was often news of someone we knew being killed, sometimes by a direct hit on the Anderson shelter in their garden.
I particularly recall the tragedy of two sisters, neighbours, who were killed at a dance hall by bomb blast.
Doodlebugs (V1 bombs) and rockets were the most frightening forms of air raid attacks. We would hear the engines cut out and not know where they would land. Those were our worst moments.
After my marriage in 1943,I moved with my husband to Edmonton and we would see the whole of central London lit red by the fires from the continuous raids.
Once, during the night, a bomb exploded about half-a-mile away and the coving from our ceiling came down on top of us in bed.

The blackout.
The blackout was a real problem unless you had a small torch. Drivers had to manage with only the smallest glimmer of light down onto the road.
We had an Alsatian dog (German Shepherd) that would greet my fiance in the darkness in the street and rest her muzzle in his hand to lead him to our home.

A married life
My husband was a toolmaker in the Royal Small Arms Factory and a part-time Auxiliary Fireman when he wasn't at work. When we married I moved the location of my work to an aircraft parts factory, still doing wages in the civil service.
My husband tried three times to enlist with the Grenadier Guards, his family tradition, but because he was in a "reserved occupation", his skills were needed making arms, he was turned down for military service.
His brother Percival Sullivan served as a Sergeant in the Grenadiers. He was shot in the foot in France and, when the ambulance was attacked, he received another wound to the pelvis. He was mentioned in despatches for taking out a group on reconnaissance
among the enemy.

Winston Churchill.
Our morale was kept up by Winston Churchill's speeches which we listened to on the radio. He raised our hopes and spirits time and time again. We believed that he would bring us through the war.

Losing a dear family friend, Harold Sheen.
My parents had a great friend who was both a brilliant teacher of mathematics and pianist who had a degree from Corpus Christi College, Oxford. By listening to him play and talk about music I learned to love classical music. He became a navigator and Pilot Officer on the Lancaster bombers(50 Squadron , RAF Volunteer reserves). It was a very sad day when we learned that he had been lost on 4th June 1942 at the age of 24. His grave is in Apeldorn General Cemmetery in Holland a few miles north of where he was shot down.
There is some irony in his story because his family had originally come over to this country from Germany and shortened their surname to Sheen because of the bad feeling towards Germany after the First World War.

Lasting pain
I have told a little of my story for the sake of my family and the archives. It is still a painful memory and I hate going back over it.

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