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My name is Catherine Elizabeth Ellis. I’m 90.
During the war, I worked in the munitions factory in Birmingham. In Hercules, they called it. They used to make bikes, years ago.
I was making bombs. Filling them with dynamite. It was a dangerous job. They trained me to fill the little holes in the bombs- like screws, they were. I was there three months, and then the Germans bombed my digs. One night, Miss Mitchell, who was my landlady, said to me ‘Come to the Andersen shelter in the garden, and I’ll teach you to play cards.’ Well, I did know how to play cards! So we went, and after we’d been there a few minutes, and I could hear pebbles being thrown at the concrete, and there was somebody there calling ‘Miss Mitchell!’ so Miss Mitchell said to me ‘Will you go and see who it is Catherine, because I’m a bit mutt and geoff’ which I am now myself! Anyway, he said ‘You’ll have to evacuate. A detained bomb’s been dropped in front of the house. You’ll have to go and look for shelters.’ And we walked miles. And I was off work at the time with laryngitis. Anyway, next morning, we went back to her home, and there was nothing left- just the end house standing. So it was a good job we had left, because even in the garden we’d have been smothered, wouldn’t we? So that was the end of that.
I actually lived in Durham before the war. I worked in a sweet shop, but that wasn’t doing essential war work, so that’s how I ended up going to make bombs in Birmingham.
After my digs was bombed, I went home, back to the dole. I had four choices- the army, the navy, airforce and NAFFI. So I went to the NAFFI. I went to Catterick Camp in Yorkshire, and I became manageress of one of the canteens, and I stopped there until I got married, and moved to Wrexham.

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