大象传媒

This story has been added to the People's War website by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Mrs Sykes and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
I was eighteen when the war started. I worked in a reserved occupation at a chemical works at Deighton. I wanted to join the Wrens. I sent off for all the papers and I went into work and said to the secretary "I want to join the Wrens- I have got all the paperwork" and he said "I don't care what you have got, I'm not signing anything-you are not going".
I went and got my first aid certificate. We had to attend meetings. One time they came out with bottles of different gases to smell. I was asked to smell one and it blew up in my face and they had to take me outside until I came round. Once I had my first aid certificate, they put me in the fire service at night, and then they put me in the ambulance service. We had to go every Saturday night to Mill Hill hospital from eight at night until eight the next morning for eight shillings! But we had some fun. They had lovely dances.
I was in the Red Cross and I did my hundred hours at the Infirmary. I remember the first day saying to myself, "Oh, I hope they put me on a women's ward". Of course, they didn't-they put me on a men's ward with soldiers in. The sister told me to look after this man, but it turned out he was dead! I had never seen anyone dead before. After a while they put me on a women's ward and all the way back I was saying, "please put me back onto the men's ward!"
We used to go along the road, practicing marching. The adjutant came to live next door and my mother said to him, "can you find me two soldiers?" One Saturday afternoon I was knitting and a knock came to the door and there were two soldiers there. They said, "Hello, we have come for our tea" and I said, "Oh have you-you had better come in then". They stayed until they went to India and then she got two more. They used to treat it just like home. I had a friend who lodged with a lady who had a shop and she had a catering licence
One time someone came round looking round the house to see if it was big enough to take an evacuee. They said it was big enough and my mother said she would take two. One day this child came, with a newspaper bundle under his arm and he only lived at Golcar and we lived at Mold Green! His mother was in the NAAFI and he had been living with his grandmother but she had got fed up of him. I suggested to my mum that she sent him back, as he wasn't an evacuee. She fitted him out with clothes. She took him to my sister's in Manchester and he slept in the attic. When I went up he was in bed with his clothes on-he had never been anywhere before and he wanted to be ready. He had every ailment that there was, including appendicitis. We had to rush him to the Infirmary and I had to walk back at twelve at night on my own. But, he stole things-pinched a cigarette case. We had had enough and eventually he was sent to a children's home. My mother saw him later on running wild

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