大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sabrina Parkar for Three Counties Action on behalf of Barbara Clayson and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I have many memories good and bad of the war year but one that I will never forget us Sir Winston shaking my hand and saying 鈥測our doing good job.鈥� How this came about was I was one of those women who was of the age to be conscripted to do war work.

I was living in a seaside town where there was no industry at all, so I had to leave home (this was 1940) I was then sent to a training school in Watford to learn to be a sheet metal worker.

After six months I was sent to Vauxhall in Luton, where I was trained once again to be a welder, a job I really enjoyed very much and felt a great achievement in what I was doing as, I did many welding jobs on Churchill tanks.

He came round to each of us who were doing our own particular jobs on different part of the tanks, and that was when I stopped welding and he shook my hand and said what he did. Nobody knew how proud I felt determined it made me to do my very best to help the war effort.

After this great day things when on much as usual we were working seven days a week, twelve hours a day, time off was rare but we were having life easy compared with what the troops were suffering.
The firm did as much as they could to lighten our lives with music while you work and ENSA shows at which at time where diabolical.

My life was so difficult from my peace time life which was selling sweets in a big store, but so much more exciting never knowing what was happening next. One of the more unpleasant memories was to protect all the workers on moonlight nights they lit oil stoves along the roads, which would bleach out thick heavy smoke to fill the valley of Luton. This caused a barrier, which could baffle the planes but choked everybody on the ground.

It was hard at times being away from my family. As I lived in a coastal town, even though it was my hometown, I had to have a police pass to go home so when I did there was a lot of red tape. But I was only one of many thousand who were evacuated.

So many memories and so much sorrow but so much comradeship which all held us together and for me found me love and a husband鈥hich made it all worth while and helped us to win in the end.

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