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This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by Karolina Kopiec from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ GMR Action Desk on behalf of Mrs Josephine Britton and has been added to the site with her permission.

I was 16-...We slept under the table for a few weeks then in bed. There were a few raids and we were out most nights meeting friends until they called up at 18. Getting a job was slow at first. In October I started at Metro — Vicks as office girl, then dictaphone typist, then went on a Background Course (you had to have a School Certificate) and came back as a Technical Assistant on Jet Engine research — I had started Night school doing Electrical Engineering by then. It was a very interesting and varied with Test Beds at the Works and Pickmere. The men treated me as one of them, not as a girl. With workmates and home friends we went to all the ballet and opera available (London companies could not play there) one shilling a seat! And plays and the Halle in various places after the Free Trade Hall was bombed. We had a lively discussion group locally too. From work we went hiking at weekends occasionally sleeping out on the hills — often 5 or 6 lads and me — sometimes more.
We went to local dances and the Old Essians New Years Dance, and very occasionally to Manchester. The local Music Club arranged a Soloman concert at Eccles Town Hall — it was crammed with the Chief Fire Officer sitting on the window ledge — a great success.
There were the occasional air raids — random bombs, and the Easter blitz when a bomber dropped a bomb when hit and struck the oil refinery in Trafford Park — We walked to work one way and had to come a different way back because of unexploded bombs.
I wrote once a month to two of my school friends in the forces, one of the lads was in India and Burma after D-Day and had interesting thins to tell — Only two of my classmates were killed but most of them had been called up. Younger friends too were called up — but reserved occupations meant that many were not. The blackout was not that bad, starlight and moonlight were more than adequate — I only remember one really black night — but when the light s went up back passages became no-go areas!
Rationing was accepted as inevitable and did not really bother us much.

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