Bomb Girls--Britain's Secret Army

by Jacky Hyams

Hirwaun, Glamorgan

  THE SMALL ARMS AMMUNITION FACTORIES

  Radway Green, Cheshire

  Blackpole, Worcestershire

  Spennymoor, County Durham

  Steeton, Yorkshire

  THE EXPLOSIVES FACTORIES

  Waltham Abbey, Essex

  Bishopton, Renfrewshire

  Ardeer, Stevenson, Ayrshire

  Drungans, Dumfries

  Edingham, Dalbeattie, Kircudbrightshire

  Pembrey, Carmarthenshire

  Wrexham, Denbighshire

  Drigg, Cumberland

  Bridgwater, Somerset

  Ranskill, Notts

  A VERY DANGEROUS JOB

  While all the new munitions factories were sited in areas that made them difficult to locate from the air, had the Germans been sure enough of their targets, there would have been few, if any, survivors of an air raid, given the extremely hazardous nature of working with explosives. The factories needed to take every possible precaution to minimise every risk, with the bombing threat being the most deadly. The hundreds of different chemicals used in the manufacture of weaponry and bombs made the ongoing risk of a bombing raid a terrifying proposition.

  Then there were the risks involved for the workers handling the highly explosive material. Some of the chemicals used in production, like cordite – a ‘low explosive’ propellant comprising nitro-cellulose and nitro-glycerine, made in the form of cords or sticks and used to send projectiles to a target – were regarded as safe to handle.

  Yet some of the materials used in detonators, the small copper shells used to initiate the triggering process, could only be filled by hand with very sensitive materials like lead azide, which looked similar to castor sugar, or fulminate of mercury, a highly toxic yet harmless-looking light brown powder. These explosive materials were so sensitive, they could cause injury to hands, fingers and faces during the filling process itself.

  Fulminate of mercury, for instance, is sensitive to friction, heat and shock and can decompose violently into mercury, a lethal element absorbed through the skin, the lungs and the digestive system. Mercury has long been known to cause mood swings and, in extreme cases, madness. The common British expression ‘mad as a hatter’ to describe a crazy person, had its origin in the 18th and l9th centuries when mercury was used to manufacture felt for hats.

  Making the millions of pellets that boosted the ignition of weaponry was a highly hazardous process, too. An explosive component in the pellets, called tetryl, also a highly sensitive chemical, was a yellow powder which could affect the skin and cause a number of skin complaints. Workers’ skin turned yellow, leading to some of them being nicknamed ‘Canaries’ or ‘Yellow Ladies’. Hair would turn a yellowish hue (hair was supposed to be covered at all times, but even then, the proximity of the chemicals could still cause discolouration). And the sensitivity of tetryl made it a high-risk chemical for causing accidents and explosions.

  Some people experienced breathing problems and asthma from handling the many chemicals used to make the bombs and weapons. Cases of dermatitis (skin rashes) and other skin problems were much higher in filling factories than any other industrial disease. In some instances, people’s teeth fell out as a direct result of the chemicals they worked with.

  These were the known hazards in munitions work. Scientists tried to come up with solutions to these problems, sometimes with creams and ointments, but the priority in wartime, irrespective of all the serious hazards, remained the same: to keep the production line running continuously.

  When contact with an offending chemical reduced a worker’s ability to do the job, they could be taken off the production line and moved to another, less hazardous, section of the factory. Yet the nature of the production line – and the filling factories were very much round-the-clock, seven days a week operations – involved a constant balancing act: taking one worker off the production line created an urgent need for a replacement.

  Throughout the years of war, some effort was made to reduce risk for munitions workers. Regular checks were introduced for employees working with certain bomb-making chemicals such as TNT (trinitrotoluene). TNT poisoning can damage the stomach lining and cause other serious complaints such as anaemia, jaundice, heart problems, liver failure and lung cancer. These checks did lead to a reduction in cases of poisoning, yet for some workers they came too late. It is not possible to say how many workers in munitions factories died as a direct result of working with chemicals.

  There are no officially published updated statistics for those who perished as a consequence of chemical poisoning, however, from January 1941 to the end of July 1945, the large filling Royal Ordnance factories maintained official records of fatalities from accidents or explosions in the factories. These records show that around 90 people lost their lives in accidents in the big filling factories. But how can such official figures possibly tell the real story?

  There were many munitions workers who survived beyond the WW2 years, but subsequently died from an illness related to their exposure to the chemicals they worked with. Or there were those who survived an accident but whose lives were wrecked by terrible injuries. The consequences of war, all too often, continue for decades beyond the official date of ceasefire.

  The words ‘small arms propellant’, the description for the explosives used in an arms factory, sound fairly innocuous. In fact, propellant is a ferocious material in an enclosed area. It destroys everything in its wake.

  SECRECY AND SAFETY

  Aside from the huge risks involved in working with chemicals and explosives, there were other important priorities to consider while Britain’s armaments resources were being built up.

  The issue of wartime security had to be strictly enforced, which meant that the level of secrecy surrounding the building and formation of Britain’s munitions factories was so high, in some instances even local people living in the surrounding area were sometimes completely unaware of the factory’s existence right through wartime.

  Then there were also the huge day-to-day, routine safety issues behind the factory walls to be implemented. Safety would have to be everyone’s responsibility, workers and bosses alike. All safety rules existed to be observed to the very letter. If not, the consequences were lives lost in the factory – and production disrupted.

  There could be no margin for error in the work itself. As mind-numbingly repetitive as some of the filling factory work on the production line could be, it still required total concentration. You needed a very steady hand. Consider the work of the woman working on the production line handling tiny detonators for the bombs. Her job involved picking up the detonator – half the size of an aspirin tablet – with a pair of tweezers. One tiny mistake, the slip of a hand, could be fatal. And if the munitions were to leave the factory incorrectly assembled, the consequences for the front line troops could be fatal too. The risks were there all the time.

  Once the factories went into operation, safety rules were handed out, in booklet form, to every munitions employee. At one of the largest ROF filling factories, at Aycliffe, County Durham, the Rules of the Danger Area booklet ran to over 35 pages and covered every aspect of safety at the factory, including rules concerning accidents and extinguishing fire.

  These safety rules were also posted as slogans around the factory canteen. In addition, the rules were read out to the workers at the beginning of the first shift every week. Anyone breaking those rules faced dismissal or worse. In one instance, a worker who was caught smoking in a munitions factory was handed a prison sentence. That’s how tough the rules were. However, human nature being what it is, rule breaking did go on at times. Pressure to keep to production line targets led to some people ‘cutting corners’ in the work. But it was a very dangerous game to play.

  ‘BE LIKE DAD, KEEP MUM’

  The combination of strict safety and tight security also meant that the factory workers, employed in a vast site of many different sectors, each sector producing a different type of munition,
would be turning up for work, performing their assigned task on the factory floor through an eight-hour shift, eating their meals in the factory’s vast canteen and even enjoying regular live entertainment that was staged in the canteens.

  Yet other than during specified breaks or at lunchtime, the majority of workers were not permitted to move around the factory building. Popping into another section to have a chat with a friend was strictly forbidden. During the blackout at night, when the slightest sign of light could alert bombers to the factory’s existence, women even had to walk to the ladies’ toilet with an escort. Every minute at work had to be accounted for; even that trip to the ladies would be carefully logged by a supervisor to ensure maximum production targets could be adhered to. The workers knew nothing of what else went on in their workplace beyond their immediate place of work.

  No questions could be asked. Official information, like everything else at the time, was rationed and handed out when it was deemed appropriate. ‘Officialdom’ (ie the Government) was in control of all information, no matter how trivial, relating to the war. And the munitions factories were, effectively, an arm of the fighting forces.

  ‘Be like dad, keep mum; careless talk costs lives’ was wartime’s most popular slogan, launched by the Government in 1940. It was a simple poster campaign, tirelessly directed at the British population through the war years. And its message worked. Though of course gossip or rumour outside the factory often relayed snippets of information to the workers about what had been happening.

  If a worker heard a loud explosion outside their section, few would ask their supervisor or boss what had happened. Everyone working on the shop floor knew what it signified. Some newspapers carried reports of accident fatalities after the event, giving the names of those killed, but never the location of the factory itself.

  So secret were the locations of these bomb factories, even RAF flyers were warned to keep away from a specific area where a site was located. They might hazard a guess, but they weren’t going to be told what was going on in the sites.

  Today, we are accustomed to the idea of health and safety regulations. We complain about them frequently. Yet back during WW2, if the worst happened and a munitions worker died or was badly injured in an accident or explosion, their co-workers on the production line might sometimes see, with their own eyes, the appalling truth of the dangers they all faced. Yet there was no stress counselling or support backup available to help ease the co-workers’ distress or shock. The emergency services were called and frequently, whole areas would have to be cleared for everyone’s safety, but it was very much a case of ‘once it’s all cleared up, get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible’.

  Managers or supervisors would briefly acknowledge the distress of any staff witnessing a terrible accident. But that was it. Time off for stress? Unheard of. Just one workers’ nervous reaction to a serious incident was seen as a risk factor that had to be contained, no matter what. Someone who couldn’t ‘hold their nerve’ was considered a danger to the production line – and would be likely to find themselves transferred to other work elsewhere. Or in some cases the factory bosses would simply let them go.

  GETTING TO WORK

  The logistics of getting the thousands of munitions workers to the factories in areas that were not centrally located and shrouded in secrecy also had to be very carefully planned. The timing had to be right: transporting large numbers from home to factory and back at exactly the right time to start or finish a shift required military-like precision.

  In order to ensure that all production ran round the clock, seven days a week, workers had to adhere to a strictly controlled rotating shift pattern which meant that those involved in the filling factories usually worked from 2pm to 10pm, 10pm to 6am, or 6am to 2pm, though there were variations on these timings across the country, depending on the work involved.

  Mostly, the munitions workers would start their winter working day in total darkness, rising at 4am, rain or shine, to walk a mile or two to board a bus or train. If it was a very long journey, they would be collected from a train by another bus which would finally deliver them direct to the factory gate. This commute to work could be relatively short but in some cases it might be as long as two hours each way, in addition to a normal eight-hour shift.

  Consider too that even these journeys to and from work weren’t always without hazard if there were air raids in the skies above: this meant that virtually every aspect of the working life of munitions workers was fraught with danger. There were specially constructed air raid shelters within the factory sites, but at times an initial air raid siren would be ignored by those in charge in order to keep the production line running just a little bit longer.

  THE DANGER BUILDING MEN

  Once they were transported to the factory gate and before entering the main building, the workers clocked in and showed their passes to the security men. Then they could change into their factory clothes in buildings called ‘shifting houses’.

  The safety rules meant that everyone was forbidden from taking certain everyday items into a munitions site. The banned items were nicknamed ‘contraband’ and had to be left in a special hut at the entrance to the factory site. Many things were designated as contraband, especially metal items, because the tiniest spark anywhere in the building could cause an explosion. Needless to say, matches, cigarettes and lighters were banned, but also all types of jewellery, metal hairclips, and even sweets – eating sweets with fingers that had touched explosive chemicals was highly risky.

  If a married woman did not want to remove her wedding ring – and many of the women working in the filling factories were married – then it had to be covered with tape. Male workers (nicknamed as ‘danger building men’ by the girls) would often carry out spot checks, looking for dangerous items.

  The factory clothes the workers changed into were either overalls or white jackets and trousers, with either a white turban or a turban-style headscarf to cover up hair. Even this clothing was designed so that it did not have any metal fastenings – another risk factor in an explosives factory – and the outfit was made of cotton, to reduce any risk of a spark from build-up of static electricity. No metal was permitted in the workers’ footwear, either, and the women were often required to change into regulation footwear.

  Yet there was very little on offer as protective clothing, the sort of thing we would expect nowadays. In some factories, barrier creams were supplied to the women to protect their skin from any effects of the chemicals they were handling, but many decided they preferred to wear their own heavy makeup – thick ‘pancake’ on the face – as a form of protection.

  THE SECRET ARMY

  Throughout the war years, the munitions workers were making a considerable contribution to the war effort, risking their own lives and safety to do an important job. Yet as far as the rest of the population were concerned, the munitions workers could not be easily identified, other than those who were unlucky enough to find themselves working with chemicals that discoloured their skin or hair. Apart from their own families, co-workers and loved ones, they were very much a secret force.

  Across the country, as the war went on, uniformed service people and voluntary workers became a familiar sight everywhere. There was status involved with certain types of uniform (the RAF, the Navy) because they instantly identified the wearer as performing a specific role.

  Yet the ‘hidden’ nature of munitions work meant that the munitions workers were often unknown warriors. They did not have any kind of distinguishing uniform to indicate that they too were helping win the war. The official reason for this was the risk of the wearer carrying any kind of contamination from their work in the factory complex out into the wider world. So they became, in a sense, invisible to the wider public, preoccupied with the hard daily slog of food rationing, blackouts, bombing raids and all the other tough, testing rigours of wartime.

  All workers at Royal Ordnance Factories were given a small badge, bear
ing the words ‘ROF, Front Line Duty’, to wear on their coats when they were not at work. Its official purpose was to signify to shopkeepers and others that the bearers were engaged in important war work, and that they should be given preferential treatment. Yet officially the factories did not exist, so very few people not connected with the sites knew about them. As a result, only a few munitions workers were given the small privileges they deserved.

  This manifested itself in tiny ways. While a free cup of tea provided by the Women’s Voluntary Services (WVS) would be served to the hordes of uniformed personnel waiting to board trains at railway stations, female munitions workers would have to team up with a group of soldiers and ask them to collect a cuppa for them. It sounds trivial now, but it underlines the lack of recognition of the munitions workers’ efforts – and their worth – during wartime.

  As a workforce, the munitions women did not effectively start working in really large numbers until two years after war broke out, when the new factories were all set up and munitions production got underway. When war was declared, there were just seven factories producing ammunition. By 1941 there were 44 munitions sites in operation right across the country and eventually this would total 66.

  Many of these factories employed very large numbers of workers of both sexes. The newly created Welsh Arsenal, the huge ROF filling site at Bridgend in Glamorgan, known as the largest munitions site in Europe, employed 32,000 workers at its peak in 1942; Swynnerton, the big ROF filling site in Staffordshire, employed 18,000 workers at one point; and Aycliffe, the vast filling site in County Durham employed 17,000 people.

  Here were huge enterprises, working nonstop, employing a large ‘Secret Army’ who didn’t stop to question it all: their long working hours, the dangerous nature of the work or the secrecy that surrounded them. They just got on with the work. And the majority of these workers were women, an estimated million-plus of them, working throughout the war, filling the bombs, making the bullets, assembling the jeeps, repairing planes, testing tanks. Their job was to make sure that Britain’s fighting forces – their own brothers, sweethearts or husbands – had the ammunition to fight the enemy and win the war.