大象传媒

On July 30th 1939 I was 14, and war broke out that September between Germany and England. It was terrifying as I was only young. When I turned 16 I was made to work around the house taking the role of cleaning, cooking and repairing clothes. I either had to do this job or take on the job of helping in the war .

After I finished working around the house, I got a job at the foundry. Here I learnt to do welding. With this skill me and my team worked on liberator maintenance . We produced big steel frames with canvas covers over them that were put over the front of an aircraft when the engine was being looked at. It was handy when there was a cold day as they could put this over, and work like that to keep the rain off .

Later I went to a little farm to work for a man called Mr Last. He told me that if I could learn the milk round and drive the milk-van within 2 weeks, the job was mine. I was so proud when I learnt it and I got the job. We had to milk the cows and take their milk to Needham Market in Suffolk. It didn't last long because it hadn't been pasteurised so we had to sell it quick. I worked there for 3 to 4 years.
During my time at the farm I met my husband and we married at 20. I continued my job until my brother-in-law returned back from fighting in the war. He then took over my job.

We had a vegetable patch near our home in the countryside in Little Stonham. We would use the vegetables we grew to cook up vegetable stew; we had this 2 to 3 times a week.

Bombs were dropped frequently where we lived, as there was an American airfield close by our home. When they went out at night to bomb Germany the Germans used to follow them home and we use to get bombed: there were no severe incidences luckily.

Driving on the road was terrible; the lighting was bad and dimmed. Shrapnel used to fly up and hit the windscreen. Another thing I hated about the war was that it was hard to get new clothes as they were rationed like food. Also we couldn鈥檛 buy many sweets as we were rationed on the amount we could have. I felt that was really unfair.

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