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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Vincent of Age Concern Shropshire Telford & Wrekin on behalf of Kathy Barmer and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I married my first husband during the war in 1945. He was a Welshman who had come to Cosford Aerodrome and we met in 1943. He was a Leading Aircraftsman.

I worked at the Wolverhampton Box Company and went to do munitions at C B Smith’s in Wolverhampton. I was very disappointed over this, as I had wanted to join the WAAFs, but my father was strict and was against it. However, in the end, I wasn’t allowed to join anyway, as I was doing munitions work by then.

We had shelters in the garden and had to spend quite a lot of time down there. We got used to the raids. We had to go down to the shelters at work too. There were so many raids in the end though that we got used to them and stopped going into the shelters.

There was bombing near us on Vicarage Road in Wolverhampton. An enemy aircraft came down near to us in Parkfields and went straight into a roof.

I was married at 20. We used to go dancing a lot. There was not a lot else to do.

War finished here in August 1945, though it was still going on elsewhere.

It was only 3-4 weeks after we were married that my husband was sent to Reykjavík in Iceland, where he had a plane crash and came down into the sea. Many of them in the plane drowned. Five of his mates, young men in their 20s, were drowned. He was saved by dinghies and later became a member of the Goldfish Bowl — this was for airmen who had come down in a crash into the sea. He was in hospital for a while in Reykjavík suffering mainly from shock. He came home on sick leave and then was sent straight back on duty to Reykjavik to get his nerve back.

The authorities never came to tell me about his crash. I only learned of it 2 or 3 days later when my mother brought a letter to the works telling me he was in hospital. She used to have a 10-minute walk up to the works. My husband wrote every day and we were always waiting for his letters.

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