大象传媒

When the war started I had not long left school. My older sister was very ill at the time and so when war was being delared, we took the wireless into the pantry so that she would not hear it; she died a short while later without ever being aware that a war had started.

I had a job as a cashier in a cinema at that time but went looking for another job, in what was known as the "oil plant". I was a grammar school girl which was regarded as something significant in those days as far as qualifications were concerned, at least in this area, and the boss liked my initiative so I was given a job in the laboratories.

I took to the work at once and soon had more responsibility than I imagine would ever have been the case without the war. The letter I received, when I moved on to another lab after the war was over, actually commented that the experiments I had been doing would normally only have been carried out by experienced graduates.

There were very few women there but we were expected to be neat and tidy at all times. Oddly enough, when you consider pictures from most workplaces, we were not supposed to wear turbans. The men were forbidden from using even the mildest strong language in front of us. They were actually very protective. One day when I was walking ome at the end of a shift I yelled when I saw a dog catching a sheep. Men came from all over the palce, thinking I was being attacked!

I soon moved on to conducting experiments and the boss used to ask for me specifically, especially for rush jobs. A lot of the time, I was testing various catalysts. I hate to think what I must have been inhaling at times but the fumes would coat the inside of your nostrils in a horrible way.

With food supplies being restricted, we became involved in experiments on potential cooking fats including whale oil. The aim was to remove strong tastes and odours so that people could cook with the oils without really being aware of their peculiar properties. I never actually tried the whale oil but we were allowed to take home samples of our labours and some of them were completely odour free and tasteless. I don't honestly know to what extent they entered the public food chain but if they did they must largely have been "disguised" as other products.

Make-up products were in short supply and one of the lead scientists used to spend part of his spare time making cosmetics with plans of setting up a company when the war was over. He used to use me as a guinea pig for his experiments. He would give things to try out and then tell him what I thought. I remember one handcream that had a lovely smell but was far too greasy; it just didn't sink in. At the end of the war, he wanted me to work for him in a factory making cosmetics in Warrington but I wouldn't leave Wales.

It was a strange place to work, in some ways. It wasn't intensive all the time like it was for the girls in the munitions factories. We would have hectic times when experiment results were literally being run up to the top scientists and then quiet times when not much was happening. When it was quiet, we didn't have to pretend to be busy. We could do our own experiments or even sit and read a book. I finished off quite a lot of knitting while sitting in a lab waiting for the next mad rush!

I loved the work and when the war was over and that unit closed, I moved to another lab where I was offered the chance to run my own section (a practically unknown honour for a woman then) but I had married and in those days that was a priority. When I became pregnant I gave up work completely even though they offered to keep my job open for me.

I feel that I did my bit for the war effort but in far less unpleasant surroundings than most of my peers.

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