大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Alison Roe of Wakefield Libraries on behalf of Flo Marley and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was seventeen when the war started. At eighteen I decided to volunteer for service; it was better than being forced. I joined the munition filling station at Thorp Arch. It was where they filled the bombs with explosives.
I drove an electric truck delivering equipment around the site. The bombs were huge; the men who filled them had to use stepladders to climb into them to begin the filling process.
Twelve of us women worked there. We took goods from the stores, loaded them onto our trucks and took them to the shops where the bombs were made. It was a dangerous place with all that gunpowder around.
I was there for four years. We worked day, afternoon or evening shifts. It was a scary place at night - there were no lights. You drove around in the dark and the shadows. Although I was there for four years, there was never an air raid while I was on an evening shift.
There was a 'dirty side' to the factory where we had to take our own clothes and shoes off. You'd change into overalls and coats and pass through a barrier to the 'clean side'. You couldn't wear jewellery; not even grips in your hair.
I finished in 1945, after VJ Day.
My son took me on a car ride recently.
"Do you know where you are yet, Mam?" he asked me.
I didn't recognise it at first but then it started to come back. I recognised the toilet blocks and the lanes we used to drive down. Sixty years on and not that much had changed.

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