大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Odilia Roberts from the Derby Action Team on behalf of Winifred Wraith and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I began working for British Rail Goods Dept. St Mary鈥檚 Wharf when I was 18 years old and I stayed until my marriage in July 1948. I had been waiting to get a job with British Rail for 18 months and when the letter arrived offering me a job as clerk at St Mary鈥檚 Goods I was overjoyed. The money was less than I had earned at Hampshires, but I hated it there, so my parents agreed to me moving. We lived near Baseball Ground and travelled each day to town on bus, the walk to Alice Street.

My job was to check arrivals of goods at depot and from there they were delivered by horse and cart. The horses were lovely giant shires and went out in the morning and not back until late afternoon, delivering locally. The only motor van delivered to places like Burton and outer Derby.

At the depot we had Italian prisoners of war who wore boiler suits with a huge gold circle on the back to identify them. We weren鈥檛 supposed to speak to them but we girls had plenty of eye contact and whistles. They were very handsome, had lovely hair which some wore in a net.

When the bombs dropped in Derby we all rushed to shelters. It was 8 o鈥檆lock one morning and had just started work for day, one of male staff had a club foot and in our haste to get through only door somehow he got his foot fast. Pandemonium reigned for a few minutes until one member of staff calmed us down and we went quietly.

I stayed at St Mary鈥檚 until I married Tom Wraith who also worked there but I didn鈥檛 meet him until he returned from serving in Egypt during war.
That was Oct 97. We wed in July 1948.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.