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The day after war broke out I started work. I was fourteen years old and had left school three weeks earlier. Off I went to work carrying my cardboard box containing my gas mask, essential equipment

During the next 6years I had a variety of jobs including — a spell of training to be a pastry cook and work in a factory canteen.

For me the war seemed a great adventure, with lots of young service men around, going to dances parties etc. We lived in Derbyshire, few bombs and little destruction, even the black out was exciting. With no immediate family in the services the war seemed quite remote.

Now I was eighteen and at that age one was directed either into the services or munitions. My mother chose munitions for me so off I went into a local factory. First of all making 20m.m. shell cases, the factory was outside of Derby in a small village called Draycott. The factory was quite small and pleasant and clean, with very pleasant people working there. Eventually the whole shop was moved to the main factory at Derby, and I was transferred to the Shell shop where very large and heavy shell cases were made. It was a culture shock! The incessant noise, the smell of oil the dust and dirt never ceased, it was horrendous. We worked days and nights, week-ends and holidays and were always tired, also the smell of the oil was always with us or possibly on us.

At the beginning of March 1943 a young uncle just four years older than me was killed at Trobuk and that was when the true meaning and horror of war became clear to me.

I went on to join the Womens Land Army until it was disbanded in 1948 that was hard work but fun.

I married a sailor and that turned out to be a disaster, just as one of the hundreds of wartime marriages did. I remember vividly the day that he returned after 3years in the East, it was so emotional standing on the dock side at Portsmouth waiting for the ship K.G.V. to dock, bands playing, wives, mothers and girl friends weeping, I was carried up on a wave of emotion.

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