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When the war started 1939, I had just been newly widowed and of course wasn’t working. In those days you had 10 shilling pension when you were widowed, and I was 21 years old. I’d always been at work until then, I worked at Courtaulds — which was an artificial silk factory.

One day I decided with one of my sister’s-on-law to have a walk. We walked down past Bolton Pauls which was an aircraft factory and my sister-in-law said I should go in if I wanted a job — so I did. I was interviewed by some gentleman there and they said yes I could start right away. So I went into Bolton Pauls, which was making at that time Dakota’s. I didn’t do anything on munitions. I worked in the office as a Wages and bonus Clerk but I did go down to the factory and see the men and of course the ladies in their overalls and headscarves, on the lathe. One of the places in the factory were making wings for the Dakota and I used to pay the mens wages every week so I could see all the working going on. We did have a bomb fall on Bolton Pauls but not that year — it didn’t hurt anyone but I was there for the whole of the six years of the war. It seems rather strange because I met my husband there and when the war came he volunteered for the RAF as an Officer and he was flying Dakotas. There were a transport plane and he was transporting all the airborne things they do. After the war he came home after they de-mobbed.

I also remember when we had Anderson shelters and we had people presumable come from the Council who told us they had to put our Anderson Shelter up (there was only my Mum and I at home at the time). Two men came and put the shelter up and it was there for donkeys years after the war. When the siren went we had to run into the shelter of course. We had a chair and torches and make a hot drink. For years and years they never took them away, most people used them as garden sheds — we did. It wasn’t until years and years after they wanted them for waste metal.

I had a brother who was in the Navy and he was bombed, as he was in the stoke hold he’d got very badly burned and had to have a lot of facial and body operations. I had a brother who was in the 6th Airborne. I also had a brother in the army. My father in the first world war was a Grenadier Guard, my father in law was a major in the dragoon guards. Quite a lot of people in my family have had something to do with the war effort. We had a lot of foreign people come into the country in Wolverhampton. We had a Dutch, Turks, Canadians and then we had the Americans all come. They used to buy up big properties. We had quite a good time when the Americans’ came because they used to have big bags of chocolate and nylons, which we couldn’t get. They were the first ones to bring us bananas, at least they did supply us with a few extra sweets that were of course rationed then.

This story was collected by Becky Barugh and submitted to the People’s War site by Sarah Evans, both of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Daphne Lloyd and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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