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This story was submitted to the site by the CSV Action desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Derby on behalf of Edna Weatherley. The author understands the sites terms and conditions.

I heard my first air raid siren on 3rd September 1939. I was at my house, living with my parents. We heard the alarm and thought the war had started but it turned out to be a false alarm. I had a choice of 4 jobs. I could stay as a civil servant, work in a factory, become a nurse or go into the forces. My husband and my father wouldn’t let me join the forces (I don’t think they trusted me with all those handsome men!), so I decided to stay as a civil servant and worked at the Admiralty, to do with naval signals, based at the Citadel near Admiralty Arch at the beginning of The Mall. We had 3 shifts, A, B and C. I was on B watch and we did a day shift (9.30am — 7.30pm) then 24 hours off and then a night shift (7.30pm — 9.30am) so you never got into a regular pattern of sleep.

Because I lived in the North of London I wasn’t under the constant threat of bombs as were people living in the centre, but then the Germans came up with a new weapon. The doodlebugs started. I was bombed out in 1944 with a doodlebug which came over the house while I was there with my mother. I was in the garden watching it go over and suddenly the engine stopped and I knew it was going to drop. I shot into the house as quickly as I could. It dropped on the other side of the road and the blast went right through the house. When it had all died down and the rubble had stopped falling, the smoke had cleared, we found we couldn’t get to the front of the house at all as it had all collapsed.

In 1945, just before I was due to give birth to my son I was evacuated to Derbyshire. Once you realised you were about to give birth they sent for the ‘agony waggon’ and we were taken to Willersley Castle to have our babies. We were kept there for a fortnight until we’d recovered from the traumas of birth. We moved back to Derbyshire when my husband retired and I wouldn’t want to live any where else now.

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