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This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio Nottingham on behalf of Mary Purves with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

After the outbreak of war we received Red Cross training while I was working in my local government job in Nottingham and one of the first things we learnt were the ten points of mustard gas; persistent, insidious and I’ve forgotten the other eight! So when the war came, we all thought we were going to bombed out of existence but in reality I only remember one bad bombing raid. I was looking after my brother’s young child and as we sheltered in the cellar, to make her feel less frightened of the terrible roaring of the raid we told her it was the coal man making all the noise!
Later on I moved into a temporary little job for £3 a week in air raid precautions and I learnt to drive a converted ambulance but as time passed and nothing much happened I thought I better do something a bit more useful. With my best friend we went for a medical examination but the RAF turned me down because I had a heart murmur and they said it was all very serious but here I am at eighty eight, still with the heart murmur but still here! Anyway they were not going to take any risks so I had to settle down to civilian life. Time went by a bit and I settled into a job with the war agricultural committee where I used to dish out permits for chicken wire. People used to come to me who wanted to keep a dozen chickens and I would give them a permit, which would enable them to by some wire. After a while I moved into regional Headquarters in Mapperly when Lord Trent was our regional commissioner. I remember once filling his water jug one night with water from the tap but of course he only drank distilled water, (which I forgot!) and so my friend and I waited fearfully for Lord Trent to curl up and die but thankfully he never did!
One of my duties back in local government when I dishing out permits for chicken wire, was to drive around in my father’s car to deliver the wages to the land army girls every fortnight. The land girls were wonderful! I’m afraid this is a rather vulgar memory but always makes me smile. When the land girls from the cities needed to go and spend a penny while they were working out in the fields they would return to the farmhouse but the country girls found this unnecessary and would say ‘hey….you don’t need to do that…don’t you do what we do and just bob down in the kale!’.
Driving in the country during one outing to deliver the wages to the land girls I remember being fired at by a lone enemy plane, which frightened me a good deal! I remember leaping out the car and sheltering in a ditch with the dog. The dog thought I was playing and I had trouble keeping the dog still and out of sight; it was a Bull Mastiff actually....rather heavy to play with in the ditch! It was the only time I felt anything personal about what you might call the ‘enemy’. I never felt any real resentment until this incident, I just accepted there was an enemy and there was a war on and there were all the reasons for the war but this time I felt it was personal as I was actually being gunned in a country lane in Nottinghamshire!

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