Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Helen Hughes, of the People's War team in Wales, on behalf of Gwyneth Gibbons and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I just wanted to get into the war and do what I could…I wanted to be a transport driver, but I wasn’t tall enough. I was about an inch too short so I had to go as a barrage balloon operator. I was very disappointed, but I quite enjoyed it when we did it. I did have training. We had to go to Cardington for six weeks … you had to learn how to use the winch, there was a lorry with a winch on the back . You held this balloon with great big cables and they had to be kept loose….oh we learnt all about that. The barrage balloons were stationed all over — anywhere they thought there’d be bombing to stop the planes.

After training, I ended up at Hampden Park, right by Hampden Park….we were parked there and there were about eight of us and a coporal and we were on duty then right through. We were there through the day as well, but at night we were likely to be called out to turn the barrage balloon, it had to be nose into wind. And all these cables had to be moved gradually all the way round. I did a lot of drawing of all of that….you weren’t allowed to take photographs. And we had a whistle and a truncheon while we were on duty and if anybody came…. I don’t know what we’d have done. Hit them with the truncheon and blew the whistle I suppose!

We were all women….and none of us could cook and the rations came down once a week …but we couldn’t cook and of course all the food went so quickly. The butter went, and we had to eat margarine…. We managed….we had a bit of fun…..we enjoyed it. And the men all used to come through our site to get up to Hampden Park to the park on a Saturday - so we had to be very careful that they weren’t allowed to come through. They tried to come through, but we used to shift them off you know. It was great…..yes I enjoyed it. I don’t know how many months I was up there. But then they did away with barrage balloons on land…..on the sea they still had them on boats……but I had to remuster and go down to I can’t remember the camp to do training for the flight mechanic for the air frames.

So then I did the training for a flight mechanic…..oh dear we had ice picks…a metal thing to do splicing metals….splicing you know cables….making a loop for barrage balloons and that….anything like that and aircraft — it was good you know, I enjoyed it. You meet all kinds of people but you know the kind you got on with. It was manual work…you had a vice and all that. The work was mainly modifications on Wellingtons and Lancasters, the big bombers. They would come in and we’d do the modifications on them….they’d say would you take the wings off to do something special like…you know. I worked on the engines and all. One day we had a great big ladders with a platform on the top and I was up there ….I had to go in the exhausts.

Once I worked on the Spitfires. They had a group of us girls go down to the south coast in Dover. And you could see the flying bombs — especially in the night — but in the day aswell. Flying bombs would be going over….and our job was to….well we had great big jars of green stuff to clean all the underside of the Spitfires and beautiful dusters to polish it all. It was to see if it would make them faster. We were down there for so many weeks….well they never told us whether it worked, but it couldn’t have worked because they sent us back to our camps. They never told us.

We don’t know if it worked….but you’d see all the doodle bugs coming over…and the Spitfires would go up and try to shoot them down, over the fields before they got to London, because they were all aiming for London you see. The engine would stop and it would come down, and be devastating….it was awful.

We were up in London when there was an air raid up there and I slept in an Anderson shelter and there were all bombs falling, and I wasn’t a bit frightened — not then. All these little mice were running round…..and I was scared — I didn’t like the mice. The houses were all being bombed all around. I was up there with my friend, a friend’s family it was Nella’s family, and they were alright but oh she had so many of her friends killed in the bombs. Terrible, terrible. And the blackout didn’t help of course… getting around with no lights. You couldn’t have a torch or nothing. It was terrible.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.