Bomb Girls--Britain's Secret Army Read online

  After my initial interviews with two such workers, Betty Nettle in Bridgend and Margaret Proudlock in Dumfries, whose stories were so fascinating and well-told, it was difficult to tear myself away, I asked the campaigning MPs why it had taken so long for these women to be vocal about the work they’d done for their country. Phil Wilson told me he believed it was that British national stoicism, the quiet ‘get on with it’ courage of millions, which contributed to the women’s long silence. Many of them were no strangers to tough times, either.

  ‘They thought their stories were not unique because it was happening to everyone else they knew,’ he says. ‘Everyone faced the same dangers. And in many of the areas the munitions women came from, adversity was not unknown – pit, farm, or Armed Forces – those were the employment choices where they lived.’

  Russell Brown, MP for Dumfries & Galloway and part of the cross-party campaign, knows munitions work well. Before becoming an MP, he worked for ICI at the Nobel’s Explosives Factory at Powfoot, Dumfries, for 23 years. Many of those years were spent in munitions work. He believes a lack of record keeping in wartime might also be one of the reasons why formal recognition has been so slow in coming.

  ‘At a time of war, perhaps paperwork wasn’t the most important issue of the day,’ he told me. ‘I made initial approaches in 2008 to say we should recognise the munitions veterans but frequently all that came back from the then DTI [Department of Trade & Industry] was “we have no records of these people”.

  ‘It’s obvious how dirty, heavy and dangerous the work was way back then, compared to the seventies and eighties when I worked at ICI. But I suspect there were many incidents in factories across the country where people were badly injured or killed, yet some seem to have been reported, some don’t. Safety wouldn’t have been the priority that it is today in many places. Robust accident records? It’s questionable.’

  Yet there was more to contend with than physical danger. As I interviewed more munitions women, other less obvious factors emerged. The pain of separation from loved ones was common enough in wartime. Communication was limited, mostly, to letter writing. But consider the emotional effect on young women not even out of their teens, girls like Maisie Jagger, ‘called up’ at 18 to work in munitions, then sent off by the authorities to a different part of the country, far away from home.

  Maisie, an East Ender, told me the separation from her family and home made her physically ill. She was literally pining for home, fading away. Thankfully, the authorities recognised this and eventually allowed her to work near her home.

  For Laura Hardwick, who has the distinction of being both an Aycliffe ‘Angel’ and a Swynnerton ‘Rose’, being sent to live away from her home in the Northeast to live nearly 200 miles away, in a purpose-built hostel, was an experience she struggled to endure with considerable stoicism, until the months before war ended, when depression overwhelmed her.

  The final straw, she told me, was when her friend and roommate returned home to Scotland: like so many other women, only the bonds of friendship helped Laura get through the sheer, exhausting slog of it all. And it was a slog. The factories ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

  The women’s shifts were rotated round the clock. For some Bomb Girls, living several miles away from their workplace, a 12-hour day, including travel time, was common. The worst times, they all told me, were the night shifts in the blackout. Bombing raids from above created more than just a risk of lives – they meant reduced production hours. While security and safety rules were everywhere, there were still times when nothing, not even a bombing raid, was allowed to stop the production line. It was that hairy.

  Rob Flello, MP for Stoke on Trent South, who helped launch the all-party munitions campaign in 2011, reminded me of the stark reality of those times: ‘People sat in the train during an air raid in total silence for what seemed like hours in the darkness. Even the railway station that they used every day didn’t officially exist.’

  For the women, most of whom had left school at age 14 to work in poorly paid domestic service, the money they earned in munitions was a huge incentive. But the relentless, exhausting routine, the danger of working constantly with toxic chemicals and the ongoing threat from the enemy in the skies above exacted a crushing toll. How on earth, you wonder, did they hold it together?

  Huw Irranca-Davies, MP for Ogmore in Wales, joined forces with Rob Flello in 2011 to launch the recognition campaign for munitions workers. He confirmed what Laura Hardwick and others told me: it was the relationships the women forged with those working with them that made the difference. The strong sense of community in remote areas like Bridgend, the huge munitions factory where Betty Nettle and thousands of other women worked, played a big part.

  ‘In many ways, it was the making of that part of mid Glamorgan, after the war,’ he said. ‘What was special about that community is that it was particularly Welsh in the way they came together, masses of people coming together – and having to make the best of what they were given.’

  ‘It was just a job, they didn’t think of the danger,’ said Vera Barber, from Bishop Auckland. Vera has been very closely involved locally in keeping the memory of the Aycliffe munitions women alive for many years. Strictly speaking, Vera wasn’t a Bomb Girl. She worked at the Aycliffe munitions complex in the administration section, as a teenage clerk.

  For the office workers it was different, a 9 till 5 job, no night shifts. Yet Vera still remembers friends at work who were killed in accidents, and the many women in factories who faced the worst personal tragedies, but kept going regardless. ‘They might have lost a loved one the day before, but they still went to their shift the next day. You never heard the word “stressed”.’

  Vera too believes it was the closely knit ties of the local communities that sustained everyone, got them through. ‘People just got on with it, especially northerners. We’re tough lot up here.’

  These women’s stories are, if you like, brief snapshots of wartime, glimpses of what now seems an almost unimaginable scenario: family life torn apart, bombs falling from the sky, everything in people’s lives closely regulated by the authorities – including their war work.

  Yet the other fascinating aspect of the Bomb Girls stories is their collective social history, the background to their lives. Many described childhoods growing up happily, in conditions that we would today regard as deprivation. And each woman’s story underlines how very different family life was then.

  Parental authority, for instance, was not to be questioned under any circumstances. Nearly all the women told me they had originally hankered for a role in the Armed Forces. Yet their parents were firmly against it because the perception, at the time, was that the Forces were not suitable for a respectable young woman. Munitions work was seen (ironically) as a safer, softer option that paid well, too.

  It would be difficult to recount these women’s stories out of context. The first two chapters of this book describe the background to the creation of the big munitions factories, the hazards therein and an overview of the way munitions factories ran through the wartime years.

  For readers wanting to know more about the factory sites themselves, the final chapter gives brief factual details of the sites where the women in the book found themselves working. In the spring of 2013, after a gap of 70 years, Iris Aplin and her friend Mary Taylor were filmed by the BBC revisiting the Swynnerton site where they’d worked as teenagers – a poignant reminder of their personal history, and the history of so many others.

  Nine women from a remarkable generation tell us their stories here. Talking to them at length – a real privilege for any writer – has only served to confirm what is part of our national conscience. Our debt to them, and the millions like them, is enormous. It can only be repaid by acknowledging their worth, time and again, and honouring their times – and all the sacrifices they made. That they did it so selflessly and quietly, without any fanfare, makes it even more remarkable.

  Jacky Hyams />
  London

  May 2013

  THE POEMS

  During my meeting with Vera Barber, she showed me some paperwork and other material she had kept from her years working in the offices at the Aycliffe munitions factory. I was intrigued to find, scrawled in pencil on the back of a few yellowing delivery notes from November 1944, a series of poignantly worded poems.

  Vera, aged 20 at the time, told me she believed these had been written by a book-keeper around her own age, a girl called Marian Taylor. The girls had worked together for some time and Vera recalled her colleague writing the poems to help her when she learned that her young fiancé, posted overseas, had been killed.

  In many ways, the existence of these poems serves to underline the camaraderie between workers that became a hallmark of the munitions factories – and the small, unobtrusive ways in which people supported each other through the bad times.

  Here they are.

  TO A HERO

  Far away in a distant land ’neath the blazing stars

  Away from all the ones he loved

  A corner of England lies.

  Lost to all the world around,

  A hero, unhailed, unsung;

  His soul we know by God is found,

  And his crown of Victory won

  We often wish to have seen his face,

  When he was safely laid

  Into his last resting place

  And military honours paid.

  THE MEMORY

  Why do you seem to keep smiling at me?

  Though your dear face I never more will see

  I picture you smiling through the rosy twilight glow,

  And stop to throw a kiss before you turn and go.

  Although you went away so very long ago

  I still recall you there, and really you must know

  You’ll always find me writing dear and I will never go

  You always knew the answer dear, because I love you so.’

  The following three short poems are untitled:

  As I wing my way through the clouds into the blue above

  I take one last look at the city, the city that I love,

  And whisper from my heart, I will come back again some day

  Until the last smouldering ruin has gradually faded away.

  As the notes of the Last Post thrill,

  I imagine I see them salute;

  And their hearts with emotion fill,

  And their voices all remain mute

  His short, young life is done

  His earthly task is o’er;

  The pounding of the gun,

  His one, last farewell.

  Although the logs have fallen and light is fading fast.

  And still you stand before me, until I feel at last

  I bear the imprint of your smile, impressed upon me here,

  Then with a tiny sigh you slowly disappear.

  CHAPTER 1

  BUILDING THE SECRET WAR MACHINE

  The history of Britain’s female munitions workers goes back to the First World War, when women played a vital role in munitions production. Yet, 3 September 1939, the day the Second World War was declared in Britain, marks the point at which the wartime story of the women in this book began. Though in reality, preparation for the looming inevitability of war with Germany – the world war everyone hoped might never happen – was already underway.

  The big warning signs came with the appointment in Berlin of Germany’s new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, in 1933. This news was received all over Europe with much trepidation: until that point, Germany’s Armed Forces were not considerable, a direct consequence of the German military defeat at the end of the First World War in 1918.

  Yet by the thirties, as his power gained momentum, Hitler’s plans for full-scale domination of Europe and beyond quickly became all too visible. By 1934, the German Armed Forces were rapidly increasing – and the country’s war machine was expanding at an incredible rate.

  In Britain, the Government was initially reluctant to accept the idea of this immensely powerful threat. Who wanted war? With the shadow of the First World War still looming large after just two decades, the argument for pacifism was heard everywhere. Wouldn’t it be better to wait and see what happened? Couldn’t there be negotiation for peace?

  These were, of course, false, flimsy hopes. It became very clear that Britain urgently needed to set about re-arming, building up its Armed Forces – and, most importantly, building brand new factories to produce the planes, the ammunition, the bombs, the guns, the bullets, everything that would be needed in the increasingly likely event of a German onslaught.

  The new Government-owned munitions factories, called Royal Ordnance Factories (ROF), would be built solely to supply Britain’s Armed Forces in wartime. Armaments factories like these were not new: the first ROF facilities had originally been built to increase munitions production during the First World War.

  They were sited around London, in Woolwich and Enfield and Waltham Abbey in Essex. The historic Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, on the River Thames to the Southeast of London, had been, until war with Germany became imminent, Britain’s principal producer of armaments. But now it was agreed that the Woolwich site was out of date. Moreover, its central location made it highly vulnerable to aerial bombardment by Hitler’s airforce, the Luftwaffe, since it was known that the conflict ahead would involve bombing raids.

  As a result, the all-important decision was made: brand new big armaments factories in safer, more suitable places away from the Southeast of the country had to be built, and quickly. This decision to avoid new construction in the Southeast proved to be tragically accurate. Throughout WW2, while over 30,000 people continued to work in armament production at the Woolwich Royal Arsenal, 103 factory workers were killed and over 700 injured during a series of bombing raids from V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets.

  FINDING THE FACTORY SITES

  The locations for the new armaments factories had to be very carefully chosen. The criteria were strict: the new sites had to be on level ground and they had to have the right geological conditions, so that some of the buildings could be built underground. The sites would be recruiting thousands of workers from within a 25-mile radius – yet for safety reasons, the ammunition factories could not be near a large centre of population. Nor could the factories be easily visible from the air.

  The new factories producing the weaponry also needed to have good road and rail connections, though their existence – and their construction – would have been shrouded in the utmost secrecy.

  As soon as war was declared in the autumn of 1939, all possible existing factory resources were needed, too: large private companies like ICI Nobel and Lever Brothers (known as Unilever today) and a number of other firms had to switch their normal production to manufacturing goods for the war effort, making everything from uniforms to aircrafts, ammunition and tanks, all under the auspices of the Government. Meanwhile, normal peacetime factory production was suspended, resulting in huge shortages of everyday goods for sale around the country (in addition to the food and other forms of rationing that were introduced early in 1940).

  There were four different types of munitions factory:

  Engineering factories producing the metal casings for bombs and shells or, in some instances, producing parts, rifles, guns and tanks.

  Small-arms factories producing the bullet casings. (These factories were often existing engineering factories turned over to war production.)

  Explosive factories manufacturing various explosive agents.

  Filling factories to fill the bomb and shell casings with the explosives. The risky nature of working with combustible explosive material meant that these were the most dangerous of all munitions factories. In these, located right across the country, the raw ingredients of explosives, shells, casings and detonators were brought together to make bullets, shells and mortar bombs.

  The four different types of munitions factories and their locations are li
sted below. Staff from the Woolwich Arsenal helped design and, in some instances, oversaw the construction of the new factories.

  THE FILLING FACTORIES

  Woolwich, London

  Hereford, Herefordshire

  Chorley, Lancashire

  Bridgend, Glamorgan

  Glascoed Usk, Monmouth

  Swynnerton, Staffordshire

  Risley, Lancashire

  Kirby, Liverpool

  Thorpe Arch, Yorkshire

  Aycliffe, County Durham

  Rearsby, Leicestershire

  Burghfield, Reading, Berkshire

  Healey Hall, Rochdale, Lancashire

  Ruddington, Nottinghamshire

  Walsall, Staffordshire

  Elstow, Bedfordshire

  Featherstone, near Wolverhampton, Staffordshire

  THE ENGINEERING FACTORIES

  Woolwich, London (Woolwich had a dual function as a filling factory)

  Enfield, Middlesex

  Birtley, County Durham

  Blackburn, Lancashire

  Cardiff, Glamorgan

  Cardonald, Glasgow, Scotland

  Dalmuir, Dumbartonshire, Scotland

  Fazakerley, Liverpool

  Leeds, Yorkshire

  Hooton, Cheshire

  Newport, Monmouthshire

  Radcliffe, Lancashire

  Maltby, Rotherham

  Wigan, Cheshire

  Patricroft, Manchester

  Ellesmere Port, Cheshire

  Hayes, Middlesex

  Poole, Dorset

  Nottingham, Nottinghamshire

  Theale, Berkshire