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The day I was sent in, I had to register and the next day they called me up for munitions. I had to go to Birmingham and learn engineering and came back to Bridgnorth and made things for Spitfires — there were two of us making special parts. After that I had to go to Goodyears to make tyres for the planes and I stayed there until the end of the war. It was three shifts going — 4 o’clock in the morning on a coach and it was wooden seats. We often used to slip off the seats.

There was one bomb in Bridgnorth (seven all together). They started up by the Church and in my Gran’s garden there was an incendiary, it didn’t ignite because the fire bomb was up in High Street. We were up here at 8 o’clock seeing she was all right and we saw this big hole — knocked this building about and demolished a lot of the buildings around. It took the front door off and took it to the back door.

I was 14 when the war started and the day after I was seventeen I was called up. We had to have this training and I’d never been in a factory before. It was not very nice; I kept on doing the wrong thing. When I was at Goodyear’s there were huge great big tyres going around. All the men had been called up, so there were only Irish men there — no Englishmen. It was very heavy work.

My sister (Betty) was in the ARP. She had to go to the Police Station and if there was anything going on she had to help. She was at the Police Station when the bombing was going off, but she was asleep and never heard it.

We never had any shelters, we had to shelter under the table. My young sister had plaster all over her legs as she’d been to Gobowen Hospital as her hips were all wrong and she couldn’t lie anywhere — so we had to put her under the table. She fell on me once, she was heavy — with the plaster.

This story was collected by Becky Barugh and submitted to the People’s War site by Sarah Evans, both of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Joan holden and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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