Working Through War

Wartime Memories as a WAAF, Cook and Butcher

S of TT at Weeton in Lancashire. The first cookhouse was at the Station Head Quarters and we had to cater...

Hylands of Wakefield

In 1943, Charlie Drake obtained a contract to build 16, later 72 Landing Craft Assault or LCA's were...

Per Ardua Ad Astra

As a trainee furniture salesman my weekly wage was 12/6, my sister, a nurse, earned £2 a month and...

September 1939 Wartime Experience

When it became obvious that all girls were to be called up, I took a short six months "reserve...

Wartime Barrow - part 2

Next they brought in the big anti-aircraft guns and set them up around the town and on Walney and at...

My Time as a Bevin Boy

After medical examination I finally received my call-up instructions in October 1944 to report to Oakdale...

A Shipyard Apprentice

There was lots of different regiments, Manchester Regiment, Cameron Highlanders, Parachute Regiment,...

Coalmine Conscript (Bevin Boy 1944 - 1947)

The extra tub was said to cover the cost of free coal to the miners and their rent allowance/free house......

Bevin Boy

A lot of the newly trained ‘Bevin Boys’ worked on the top, on the screens or in the pit bottom...

Swiss Jig Boring Machine

The setting up of the “X” shop — Points and Crossings machinery was a major project...

Tomatoes by day and singing with dance bands at night!

We left in an air raid, some with him in one car and some with Lady Starmer, the Welfare Officer, and we...

The job was to operate machines, called ‘bombes’ which found the settings of the rotors on the German Enigma machines!

My six weeks ‘square bashing’ was done at Tulliechewan Castle, near Loch Lomond. I still have...

Working on the Derby Railways During WW2

We lived there until he got a house in Derby near the arboretum. grandad was a plate layer ganger for the...

MY EARLY YEARS

Luckily I was able to go there and I was sent to the Dean and Chapter Colliery for a further...

A BEVIN BOY'S STORY

We miners were called Bevin Boys, after Ernest Bevin, the then Minister of Labour. Nor was compensation...

Personal Experience in World War 2 (Part 1)

I saw there was a vacancy in the drawing office at BSA at Armoury Road, Small Heath, so I applied. When...

A Guernsey Girl in the WRNS

I applied for this, and I was accepted, and I had to go to Dunfermline Dockyard on a very intensive course,...

Wartime Norwich

I moved to Norwich with my sisters Joan and Kate a year before the war, after mother died. My sister Kate...

Memories of the Home Front in Oxford

At MPRD the wrecked aircraft were piled alongside alleyways over a vast area, SE of the Cowley railway...

Notes on Wartime Employment

In 1943 I went to work at the laboratory at No.1 Metal and Produce Recovery Depot at Cowley, remaining...

A wartime teenager

We had to deliver mail to the foreman's offices down in the factory; these offices were sited at the...

Sylvia In The REME

But a very great many preferred to join one of the services, that was the RAF in which the girls were named...

Working at Dunstable's Met Office

The Met office in Dunstable consisted of a collection of huts, all of them under camouflage nets. After the...

Wartime memories of Ampthill Part Two - Working in the offices of Elstow Ordnance Factory

Wartime memories of Ampthill Part Two — Working in the offices of Elstow Ordnance Factory. A lot of...

Memories of working in a reserved occupation Part One - Working at W. H. Allen's, Bedford

Memories of working in a reserved occupation Part One - Working at W. H. Allen's, Bedford. I did an...

Interview with Roy Berry

I then went to Cossford near Wolverhampton where I trained as a flight mechanic “I was disappointed...