Working Through War

Memories of one LumberJill

It was to be filmed as part of an Information Film for the Ministry of Supply; the film was going to be...

Memories from the Royal Engineers Records Office Brighton

Under the Earth Instead of Far Above It: My Underground War as a Reluctant Bevin Boy.

The regular miners who were still working there used to enjoy sending the Bevin Boys to work with the...

GPO Telephonist Part 2

Another thing I found very strange when doing PBX relief, one day I would be sent to a ban, by Blackfriars,...

Jim Bates - Bevin Boy

The shortage of miners, because many had opted for the forces, had created a coal shortage, and in those...

Memories of an indentured apprentice electrical engineer 1939-1944

The Germans were obviously very aware of the work which was going on at Lowestoft and Yarmouth as they...

Memories of a Wartime Teenager

This I did quite easily, it was as a general junior clerk at Hove Food Office in Hove Town Hall. I can...

Memories of a Wartime Teenager Living in Hove

This I did quite easily, it was as a general junior clerk at Hove Food Office in Hove Town Hall. I can...

An Engineer's War - Part One

52a - John Edkins was born in in Birmingham in 1924: When the war started we lived in Wilmcote. John...

The War Years and The Coal Mines

This was not something just affecting me, it was one relating to all the 'Bevin Boys'. Wages in the...

MY LIFE AND TIMES - THE BEVIN BOY'S STORY 1945 - Part 7

Even the British Legion prevented the Bevin Boys' Association, when it was formed, from taking part in...

A "Bevin Boy" in the Second World War

During the Second World War, 1939 -1945, a scheme to direct young men to the coal mines was introduced in...

Working in the war Pt 5

A short time before VE Day Arthur Brown asked me to have an early tea and go fit some guards to a...

A CLIPPIE IN WW 2 PART 1

My passengers were miners going off duty, the hilly road was very icy, the bus could not make the top... I...

A Railway Story - Part 2

That company, Burtons was the actual name but they went as the India and China Tea Company, and they had a...

The War Years at Burton, Birmingham and Derby-Part Two

Trigg: Derby Int: Thank you very much for coming up, you will be hearing directly from Rolls-Royce. A...

From a welder at Deans to life as a Bevin Boy

I started at Deans as a welder in 1938, and when the war started in 1939 I was welding drum fittings,...

Life on the Home Front during the Second World War

My friend was going for an interview to work on the buses, so I went with her to Maidstone and got a...

What did you do in the war Daddy? (part 2)

On February 14th 1941 I went home, and three days later received a letter from the Ministry of Supply,...

steelgirls strike

Suddenly, a blast of white heat that travelled the entire length of the mill heralded the opening of the...

Confessions from a Reaserved Occupation.

I understand that statistically my home town, Sunderland, at that time produced a greater tonnage of...

Agnes’s War.

I worked at the National Registration Office until 1949 when my son Peter was born, I hated leaving this...

Wartime Remembered

But after one winter and before I was called up in the first conscription of women by age group, army...

A Royal Ordnance Factory Remembered

I was then moved to the Planning Department to work with a Mrs. Morris under the direction of men who were...

A Railway Story - Part 1

The Ministry of Food were looking round the whole of the country, practically speaking, for areas where...

Digging up the past

My days of serving my somewhat broken service as a Bevin Boy in the coal mines over a period of two years...