大象传媒

鈥楾his story was submitted to the 大象传媒 People's War site by a volunteer from CSV Oxford, on behalf of Gwen Honey and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.鈥�

When war started in 1939, Gwen was 24 years old and married to Jack, who volunteered to go to the south of the UK to do signal work. Gwen was left in Cropredy, North Oxfordshire and had to work. She was sent to 鈥淪pencer鈥檚鈥�, the corset factory.

An 8am start meant a 6am rise was necessary when the curfew bell rang, because Gwen had to catch a train at 7am and also had to run up the road to the station. The only train back was at 8pm, so a long day鈥檚 work was in store.
She took over the job of a man called 鈥楳r. Casebrook鈥� and had to learn how to make military belts for the US tank drivers. These were small belts with padding inside them for protection because it was such a tight squeeze inside the tanks.
At this point, her husband Jack was sent to his station in Withesea, to perform bomb disposal duties, in Plymouth, London and along the East Coast. Working time was very precious, so the women who worked in the factory hardly ever had time off. Gwen was desperate to see Jack and wanted to go to a family wedding, so she begged for time off. She was nearly sacked, but convinced the boss that he would do the same to see his son, whom he had not seen in a long while, so he kept her on because she was such a good worker. This was on one condition- that she did not cause other women to take time off from work!

Gwen then moved to Aylesbury and signed up for work immediately. She went to the Echo Radio Factory which made radios for US and British planes. Gwen took up the role as the second cook in the canteen (out of 40 in total) because she could do some 鈥渟pecial cooking鈥�. This involved making very special, top class lunches and dinners for government related people who came to visit. They had five legs of lamb for the fire- watchers, so there was always plenty of food to feed the 1000s of people who were employed. Gwen became pregnant in 1943 and the boss at Echo allowed her to have whatever food she wanted whilst she was pregnant; because the company had plenty of food to spare (except for fruit, which was not imported!) However, Gwen only wanted a bit of ham, so that is all she had.

She went home to Banbury during her pregnancy, but gave birth in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford- where many air raids took place. During the raids, babies were taken down to the hospital cellars and the mothers were told to get under the bed! Gwen鈥檚 sister- in- law Doris worked as a ward nurse, so she was able to look after Gwen and took her baby daughter down to the cellar in the raids. Gwen learnt from Doris that when she was training in Croydon, they received messages when women went into labour. Doris had to dodge the falling bombs to get to the pregnant women because Doctors never went outside the hospital- it was the nurses who risked their lives.

Back in Cropredy, after her daughter was born, Gwen offered to help a baker who made special foods, such as Wedding Cakes. Gwen鈥檚 job was to ice the cakes and crystallise flowers so they could be used as decorations. As food was scarce during the war, sugar was used to simply ice the tops and sides of cakes. But, if people had some extra sugar, then Gwen was able to decorate the cake more ornately with piped icing. She enjoyed this work.

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