On Becoming a Fitter

The war changed my whole life. My father wouldn’t allow me to join the ATS. The first experience was with men, at the factory, and I learnt the fact that they had no idea how to treat women. We had 8 weeks training for our work and as none of us had ever been inside a factory, it was a whole new experience. The men laughed at us, by the end of the first month, there was only two of us there, and after a while it was just me. Birmingham had begun to be bombed more often, and one of those nights I was on night shift and went to the canteen without my gas mask. The red light started flashing, and I tried to get to the nearest shelter, a men’s shelter! At first they didn’t allow me in.
We could never walk along without helping someone. My own digs were bombed in the end. One night a place near me was bombed and I found glass all over me.
I stayed in Lancashire for the rest of the war and didn’t see another German aircraft! I used to help the farmers get the harvest in and could never really keep track of how many hours of work we all worked. But it was OK because I knew it was for the war effort. Not many people knew how to treat women, and we always seemed to get the rough edge. I ended up as a sample viewer and had to inspect the job. It was quite a responsibility. The river company asked me to go back to them after the war! I was 21 when I went to Lancashire, and I still like the north to this day.
Erwy was a middle town, and there was huge resentment. The working men’s clubs were taken over. All the mill machines had to be scraped, and all the drilling machines had to be put in. We weren’t popular in that area, like when Sizewell was built and all the people came over to Leiston. So all the prefabricated houses were built for the new workers. That’s when we came into our own. We had to view all the machinery. I was on gears, until I was made a sample viewer. Because the waged were so low, the government helped to pay for our digs. So my landlady’s son worked in the mill factory, I was invited in to look around, the noise was terrible, and there were so many dangerous areas. There was no space in there.
When the mines were closed, people were sad for it, yet several people died in the mines!

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