Soliders Boots

My name was Eva Albrighton I have lived in Baddesley Ensor all my life, I left school at 14 years in 1937. I started work at Courtaulds in Nuneaton but they were on short time with one week in and one week out so I left and went to work at George Ward’s shoe factory in Atherstone for a short time. I left there to work in the co-op shop as my sister worked there too but I didn’t like working 8amto 8pm including Fridays and Saturday with ½ day off on Thursday. So one Thursday I went to Barwell in Leicestershire to the main factory of George Wards and got a job in one of their four factories in Stapleton Lane. They had two other factories one in Arthur Street; where the main factory was; and one in Hill Street. When war broken out the factory I worked in was taken over for a munitions factory so I was transferred to their main factory. My first job was on a machine in their closing department which was an all women ‘shop’. I was moved to the ‘clicking department’; so named because of the noise the machines made when they worked; which was all male and I worked on a machine cutting the leather linings for shoes. Most of the older men worked by hand cutting the leather parts for shoes. More girls were drafted in to do the same job as me as the young lads got their ‘calling up’ papers. Soon there were 4 of us. Then as women had to register for ‘war work’ we went to Hinckley to sign on. Out of the four of us one was sent to work on munitions; she made the hinges for the flaps on the planes: the second went into the Women’s’ Air Force and the third went to the Land Army. Being the youngest of the four I had to stay in the shoe factory to do what was a ‘man’s job’ making boots for the soldiers. I work on what was know as piece rate and earned the same wage as a man well before equal pay came into force.
I stayed there all through the war. I travelled every day by bus. We left home at 7am worked from 8am to 6pm and were lucky to get home by 7pm. Soon women began to drive buses for the first time. I can remember coming home one night, of course the buses only had slits for lights, and we missed the bridge as we came out of Atherstone and went over the edge. We had to climb out of the back door of the bus to stop it tipping, and walk home. As we got about a mile from home the air raid warning sounded. One girl had to walk to Dordon on her own and she was terrified, she wanted us to walk with her but as we had twice as far to walk as she did and we wanted to get to the air-raid shelter we said no!
I still think of the young men I worked with who gradually went off to war. I would hear of this one being killed at Dunkirk or one in the navy who was torpedoed and had his head blown off. Another in the Air Force went off to Canada, as lots of the air force did—to train there. I had one lad come back to work beside me that had lost his right hand and only had a hook to use. . But after a short while the machine we had to use was too heavy for him.
When leather got too short wooden sole shoes were starting to be made instead. I was given the first pair to wear to test them as my job was standing all day. I went on holiday to Llandudno and was walking along the pebble beach when the sole split in two. The idea didn’t last long.
We never had an air raid at Barwell that I can recall and the only time I never went to work was when Coventry was bombed and one or two fell locally so I was up all night.
I married in November 1945 when John (Garratt) was in the army. He was released in July 1946, when I then came back to the Atherstone factory from where I left in 1949 to have my first child.

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