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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Freda Willis and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was 14 when war broke out and after leaving school I had various jobs. My father ran a hotel in Fleetwood. Unfortunately my mother wasn’t in very good health and when I was called up at 17 I was unable to go. So I joined the Women’s Junior Air Corp eventually getting made up to sergeant.

I went to work at Vickers Aircraft factory at Squires Gate Blackpool, there I had to work 8am to 8pm,on two weeks days and two weeks nights, finishing two hours early on one night a week. They were very long hard working days and I especially hated the night shifts. Although one night I remember the inspector taking us girls around the factory to see the finished planes that we had helped to build, we enjoyed that.

After twelve months there I was made redundant and went to work in a grocers shop in Blackpool. I stayed there for some time, but when officers and their families started to be billeted at my father’s hotel I went back there to help out

Rationing wasn’t too bad for us as a family as there were six of us, so we shared the coupons, also whilst working at the grocers, although I never got anything I wasn’t entitled too, I always got first chance of things when they came in without having to queue.

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