大象传媒

I left school at the end of the summer term in 1943.The war had been on for nearly three years and I along with all other schoolchildren had to carry my gas mask everywhere I went and had to do air raid practice every week when we would go down to the air raid shelters that had been built on part of the playing and sports field.
I was in the Girl Guides and we knitted gloves,socks and balaclava helmets for the armed forces and sent parcels with what luxuries we could get to make life a little bit easier for them.
In September of that year I got a job as a junior clerk in the office of the Managing Director of Charles Roberts and Co. Ltd railway wagon builders at Horbury Junction.The firm also made component parts for aircraft and churchill tanks and over the road there was another section called Bungalow Fields where shells were made.The Managing Director wrote memos to all heads of departments in the factory and it was my job as the office junior to deliver these and obtain a signature from every foreman as proof of receiving them.I loved this job as it meant that Iwent all over the factory-fitting shop,welding, moulding,electrical panel beating etc.Everyone was so friendly and I soon found my way around this vast place where everyone was working hard as their part of the war effort.
When I was eighteen I was called up to enlist for the armed forces but because I was working for a firm that was employed in war work I was exempt from going into the forces and returned back to work with my exemption certificate and carried on working at the same place and moving around to other offices as different opportunities came along.I had been going to night school all this time to learn shorthand and typing and of course learned other general office skills during the day When I was in the postal department I worked long hours to make sure that all the letters got away every day.
Near the end of the war we had a special visitor to the factory,it was the Princess Royal,Countess of Harewood who came to show the appreciation of the Ministry of War Department for the hard work they had achieved.The Princess was a very charming lady and her visit proved to be very opular when all the office staff and factory workers gave her a big welcome.
When the war was over all the men who had worked at he factory and in the offices were demobbed from the forces and returned to the jobs that they had been doing before the war.Some of the existing staff moved to other offices and departments and settled down to their jobs without any problems.
I know that I was not a member of the armed forces and that my life was not in danger as were the lives of many people at that time but I think that in my own way I had done just a small bit to help to keep things going on the home front.

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