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(This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from Radio Cambridgeshire Action Desk at Bircham House on behalf of Rose Stubbings and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Stubbings fully understands the sites terms and conditions).

I was born in London and I had 2 sisters; Ivy and Nelly. We used to live in Kensington but my father who was in the Metropolitan Police Fforce died when I was 3 years old of the flu epidemic. After his death my mother couldn’t afford to stay in London so we came to Fulbourn in Cambridgeshire with my grandmother. That was a change to come to Cambridge. We were frightened of cows because we weren’t used to seeing them, and then my mother re-married.

When the war started I was working for the Tailoring Company in Cambridge — aged around 23 years old, but I changed jobs and went to work at Fulbourn mental hospital in the sewing room, making black out curtains. I went there because they pay was more. Then in the evening we used to take it in turns to fire watch. We had to go round the building to see if there were any incendiary bombs. We worked with 2 woman and 2 men. We were scared at first but we soon got used to it. When I was at Fulbourn I saw a German plane come down on the field. The plane had 2 German’s in it. They were both captured. We didn’t worry about seeing it, and we just got used to it.

I got married in 1940 to Jack Stubbs and he was a mechanic at Kings and Harpers in Cambridge (a motor garage). He was called up before we were married into the Air force as he knew about machinery. After this training he was sent to Oakington and then onto Japan and Burma for 6 years. He repaired the planes. It was really hard him not being around but working helped to keep me busy. He never had any leave, but it was strange when he came back after 6 years, and then we had 2 girls.

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