Making Gas Masks

I wonder how many people remember, or have even heard of, a very important piece of warwork that was done the year before war broke out.
It was at the time of the Munich Crisis and I was a student at Derby Teacher Training College.
One evening after lectures and dinner, about 8pm, all 120 of us, were taken, along with some of staff, to an assembly station.
There, we were set to work assembling gas masks, considered a matter of urgency.
The hardest part of the assembly was fitting an elastic band which held the face piece to the respirator cyclinder.
The face piece was fitted over one end of the respirator and then the elastic band had to be manoeuvred into position to hold the two parts together.
The bands were very thick and about an inch wide and needed a considerable amount of strength to put them on to the respirator and work them to where it met the facepiece.
They were smaller in circumference than the respirator because they had to fit very tightly to prevent any gas seeping through the join.
Then the masks were carefully checked and if the union was not perfect, it had to be made so.
It was even harder to move the band once it was in position and get it right, than to get it there in the first place.
Those who were given that particular job will well remember the sore and bleeding fingers that resulted from it: the bands just managed to catch the base of the nails.
The respirators were packed in cartons in cardboard tubes. I was one of the lucky ones allocated the job of opening the well-sealed tubes and passing them on for distribution to the fitters.
We worked until 2am next morning and our principal kindly allowed us an extra hour in bed before lectures as usual!
We went back to the assembly station that evening, but as everything was completed a little earlier there was no extra sleep.
I have no idea how many masks we students assembled, but along with many other workers there must have been enough for the population of Derby, including special ones for the babies.
The masks were not, of course, immediately required, as the crisis passed when Mr Chamberlain came back from Munich with 'peace in our time'.
Sadly, he was wrong, but the masks were ready when war came.
Those of us who were students then, are in our middle-to-late eighties now, but there must be many assemblers throughout the country who will be even older.
I wonder how many students from DTC still think of those two nights of little sleep and sore fingers. I would love to know.

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