大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by a volunteer in Gloucester on behalf of Fred Pittleway, and has been added to the site with his permission. Fred fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

When we talk about the War, we all think about the horrors and the sacrifices made. And I am a great believer in that we should look back at the past in order to move forwards to the future.
Yet sometimes amid the chaos, and the and the smoke filled ashes, in the smallest corners of our communities, there springs moments of great beauty.
Fred Pittleway was born in Portsmouth but moved to Gloucester while he was very young and will always consider himself to be a Gloucester lad.
Originally he was an employee at the W.C. Nicholls factory which was on the site where the old Permali factory is now situated He worked as a cabinet maker, but when the war years started it was turned into a munitions factory which made ammunition and battery cases for submarines.
These kind of jobs were known as reserved occupations where apparently If you wern't in a reserved occupation you were conscripted straight into the Army.
It was one night after work in 1941, and Fred thought he would go along to his local cinema to watch a George Formby film called Come on George. Little did he realise that in the queue to the ticket office he had an appointment with destiny. He looked up and caught the eye of a young attractive lady. Coincidently they were both on there own, just hoping to catch a few hours of escapism.
He looked into her eyes, she looked back into his and eventually after plucking up enough courage they started talking And from that moment on he realised that she was the one he wanted to marry.
Her name was Mildred and she was a nurse from Swansea, but she had to move down to Gloucester with her sister when it got bombed. But ever vigilant she stayed where she was and did her job going back and forth between Swansea and Gloucester for two years, before she eventually settled with Fred and they eventually got married in 1943. Mildred managed to get a job at Charmwood House as a nurse, and Fred stayed with W.C. Nicholls when in reverted back to cabinet making.
They met when they were 25 and had over forty years of happy marriage together. It just goes to prove that even under the most dire of circumstances, love will always find a way.

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