´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Jenna Benson, for Three Counties Action, on behalf of Mrs M Leers, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I remember the broadcast on the Sunday morning by chamberlain saying we were at war, 1 hour later the sirens went off, me and my brothers and sisters all shot under the kitchen table. My Mum didn’t hear it as she was deaf.
We got up and we were all frightened I was 17 then.

There was all of a sudden my mum and dad was out, there was a blackout, you were not allowed to have a light on, I was old enough to know it was dangerous. My sister was 5 or 6 I don’t think they understood, I was old enough to understand as I read the papers.

We had an Anderson shelter given to us by the government in the garden it filled up with water and the frogs thought it was pretty good, my mum didn’t want to go down there, it was more scary down there and cold and damp.

I used to work in a factory that made masks to go over the headlights of cars, that was 7 miles from where I lived and I had to cycle home in the blackout and all the cars had the masks on, well if they had petrol, that was for essential services. The only people that could get petrol in the war was doctors and nurses, there was a red dye put in to the petrol so that if people tried to sell it they would know where it had come from.

In 1941 I went into the WAAF’s to work on the barrage balloons, I remember that they issued two separate pairs of knickers black ones they used to call black outs. You couldn’t wear your own clothes unless you were on leave and of course clothes were on coupons too.
The only way that you could get out of the forces was to get pregnant.

I got sent to Birmingham as they were undergoing a blitz krieg and needed more barrage balloons
When we had the warning that the Germans were coming over we had to go out, about 14 of us we had to put them up, if it was windy you had to get on a long ladder and wind up the tail so that they didn’t get caught up in the wind and once I fell 18 feet off the ladder and got into trouble for not reporting it.

We had to learn how the balloon worked and what it was filled with, I think it was hydrogen, they were highly flammable. You had to know the wire and the breaking power, how the engine worked and all about the winch, in other words you had to know exactly what you were doing. If you consider that before the war girls like that without a lot of education there was no prospects at all you could work in a factory.

I applied to go in the air force before the war and I failed the medical because I had one bad tooth, once the war started they called and said that they had lowered the standard of medical and I was allowed in.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.