Bomb Girls--Britain's Secret Army

by Jacky Hyams

  After about three months on Group Six, Mary and I were moved. She went to Bullets and I moved to 7C, working on detonators and boosters, making the components to put the fuses for the bombs together.

  This kind of work was dangerous. We were working with highly explosive material, TNT. You worked with a tray filled with little handles for the fuses, and each one had to be filled with the explosive material, the TNT. You had to fill each one by hand. You used a little tiny scooper. You would scoop a small amount of the yellow TNT powder from a metal container and place it on each handle. Then there was a big machine that pressed it all down. At that point, you had to walk away and stand behind a protective glass screen while it was being pressed – in case it exploded.

  At times you wore gloves to do the work but not always. When you finished work for the day, your hands were stained yellow by the powder. If you blew your nose, your hanky would be yellow. Some of the yellow would come off if you washed your hands, but not all of it. And a lot depended on what type of skin you had. For some girls, the yellow powder didn’t suit their skin at all and they had all sorts of allergies and skin problems with the TNT. Some girls’ skin problems were so bad, they would have weeping sores on their faces, so they wore a bib permanently – and then they wound up being off work for good.

  One of the things I did when I saw the effect the yellow powder was having on other girls was to go home and rub my face with peroxide: that neutralised it to an extent. But I was very lucky; for some reason I didn’t have serious skin problems working with the yellow powder. I did have a blonde bit in my hair where the turban didn’t fit properly, but that was the only effect it had on me.

  The early shift meant a pre-dawn start. Up at 4.30am, pedal like mad to Audlem, then a 5.30am bus ride to Swynnerton to get there in time for the 8am start.

  On the later shift, I’d be home at midnight. But if my hours permitted, I’d still get out and help Dad in the garden, or get the tea for Mum. By now, she was working too as a Pearl insurance collector. She got the job from a neighbour who’d had the round but he had to go in the Army. So Mum did it for him through the war.

  I used to work in the garden sometimes in my skirt and bra; that used to give the neighbours a good laugh. There was an Army camp near us at Adderley and they had a habit of practising their bugles in a nearby field. Sometimes at night you couldn’t sleep for the practising!

  But if it was tiring travelling backwards and forwards all the time it was still better to live at home than being sent off to live one of the big hostels they built specially for the munitions workers.

  A couple of the girls at work stayed at one of the hostels and they were always saying how much they didn’t like it. Though from what they said, it was all very organised. I felt quite sorry for them. They were obviously very homesick.

  But that was how it was in munitions: the women working with me came from all over the country, places like Scotland and County Durham. It was tough without their family close by. Or having their husbands or sweethearts posted abroad. And the food they got at the hostel wasn’t what some of them were used to. I can remember some of the Scottish girls saying they couldn’t stand the celery that was usually served on a Sunday evening; they used to give it to the English girls. And the Scottish girls thought some of the English girls were ‘fast’ because they used to talk about drinking alcohol or going to pubs.

  There were laughs too, though. In the canteen, the girls who packed the boxes of bullets used to talk about the little notes they would put into the boxes for the soldiers or sailors.

  ‘Keep ’em on the run’ they’d scribble to these troops. Or ‘We all love you and we’re here for you’. They’d even include their address, just in case. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I heard that one or two girls even wound up marrying men who’d got the letters. There was a lot of talk about that sort of thing going on.

  For us, the main thing was we were doing a job, saving the lives of our own troops. We didn’t think about the enemy or what they might be doing. In my early days at Swynnerton, us girls would sing the regimental marching songs like ‘Colonel Bogey’ – they all had rude words – yet gradually, as we got the reports of how many troops were being killed, we stopped singing those songs. It just didn’t seem right any more.

  Then I was moved again to another shop in 7C, making tracer bullets for the pilots to use. (Tracers are slow burning units, used as markers for targets, built with a small pyrotechnic charge in the base). The tracers were filled with something that looked like mouse droppings called strontium nitrate.

  As dangerous as the work was, I never actually saw any accidents. But we certainly knew about them. Sometimes you’d hear an explosion – and, of course, there’d be talk about it amongst the girls afterwards. We all heard about one very big accident that took place at the burning ground, which was to the north of the Aycliffe, far away from the factory buildings. (The burning ground was the area where sub- standard explosive material used to assemble the ammunition could be safely destroyed). We had no idea what went wrong that time. But it was a very serious accident.

  It was great to have money to spend on your days off but thanks to one of the older women in the shop, I realised there was a chance to save money too. This older lady had worked in a pottery factory before the war and one day, a group of us got chatting about going to dances and buying new clothes when the lady looked up and said: ‘You young people won’t ’alf be sorry one day. You’re earning big money. You should be putting some away for when the war’s over’.

  That stuck in my mind. And then I learned you could save while you worked. They’d take so much out of your wages every month and you’d get a savings certificate in your pay packet, showing you what you’d saved up. I started out saving five shillings a week, then more. In the end, I came out with £300. Many other girls did the same.

  I did have good reason to save, mind you. By the last year of the war, I got engaged. I met William George Aplin, ‘Bob’, in July 1941. It was funny how we met, really. I was walking home from a whist drive with my mother and two friends in Audlem and on the other side of the road, this soldier came along. His shoes were making a funny clicking noise and we all started laughing. Then he crossed the road.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘It’s your boots,’ my mum said. Then he told us he was going back to camp at Adderley.

  ‘Is anyone going my way?’ he quizzed us, looking straight at me.

  My mum didn’t mince words.

  ‘She’s the only single one,’ she said, gesturing at me, having spotted his look.

  I decided I liked the look of him. He was clean and he looked happy – he’d definitely had a beer – so we walked off together towards Adderley. On the way I heard all about Drake’s Drum and how it had been returned to Plymouth. Bob was with the Devonshire Regiment. He’d been in hospital with a bad knee and because he’d stayed in hospital for more than three weeks, he’d been transferred to another Regiment, The Loyals.

  Halfway back to his camp, it was agreed. We’d meet up the next night.

  I liked this soldier. There was no nonsense about him; he was 25, seven years older than me, and he was more or less my first boyfriend. My mum liked him because he was a tidy sort of person. So we saw each other for all of three weeks before he was sent away, up to Scotland. Bob wrote me from Scotland to say he was going abroad and it was not fair for us to stay attached.

  ‘You could meet someone else,’ he wrote.

  I didn’t reply. I knew what he meant. Other girls at work met young men like this and then they’d suddenly be posted overseas. But I kept that letter – I’ve still got it to this day.

  That was in the August. The following January in 1942, just after Christmas, a card came from Bob wishing me a Happy New Year. There was a PS at the bottom: ‘If you ever find time to write, this Post Office address in Burma will find me.’

  Guess who sat down and wrote? And we wrote thro
ughout his time in Burma.

  By the time I was 22, just before the war ended, he managed to get a month’s leave. Bob came home and asked me to marry him. So by the time he went back we were officially engaged. And then the war ended.

  Three weeks after VE Day, we were all out of Swynnerton. I was among the first to finish there because I’d been travelling in on the outlying buses. It was over for us. So we had to go back to the land – and start again.

  I went back into service, at Moss Hall in Audlem, a manor house overlooking the Shropshire Union Canal. I was cleaning and cooking. But no more living in.

  Bob was a stonemason. He didn’t like to talk about Burma after he got back. There’d been many times when he couldn’t write to me because he was behind the lines and his brother, who was a medic and also out in Burma, knew this and would write to me to say: ‘keep writing, Iris’. So I never really knew what it had been like for Bob, how bad it was.

  We were married at Addenham Parish Church in March 1948. Bob got his old job back in Honiton, Devon, so afterwards we moved down there straight away because we’d found a house to live in. On honeymoon, I got caught. My eldest daughter Amelia arrived late in 1948, then Josephine in 1953. After Jo was born, I went back to work in a secondary school canteen for 27 years. Bob carried on working as a stone mason until he retired. He was 80 when he died in 1996.

  There should be some recognition. We did give up all our time to it, working those shifts for four years. Everyone you worked with mixed in, helped each other out. We didn’t think about the danger. But it wasn’t like today where people stand off: the comradeship us girls had then just isn’t there now. Though sometimes I think women today would do the same as us if they had to. I’m sure they would because they would think about their country.

  I often wondered afterwards if those bombs we helped make did their job and many years later I asked one of Bob’s friends, who’d also been in the Forces, about it. I was told: ‘oh yes, they definitely did their job’. We knew we’d helped. But it was still good to hear it all those years later.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE FACTORIES

  While the day-to-day working life for Britain’s Bomb Girls followed a similar pattern across the country, the history of the munitions sites varies from area to area.

  The new Royal Ordnance factories carried out much of the wartime production of munitions. Yet the existing, privately owned factories and works, adapted to manufacture munitions for the war effort for the Government, were already employing young women before the start of WW2.

  In some cases, these women finished their munitions work when war ended yet continued to work for the same company when the factory returned to its peacetime activity. (Ivy Gardiner did this briefly at Port Sunlight before she got married).

  While many of Britain’s Bomb Girls worked in the three largest filling factories at Bridgend, Swynnerton and Aycliffe, detailed record keeping in wartime for the other munitions factories located around the country has not proved extensive, mainly because of the secretive nature of munitions work. So it is not possible to give a more detailed overview of all the munitions sites.

  Here is some additional information on the various munitions factories where the women interviewed in this book worked.

  BRIDGEND, GLAMORGAN

  (BETTY’S STORY)

  The Bridgend Arsenal was chosen as a filling factory for a variety of reasons: geographically, it was remote from the areas of the country most vulnerable to enemy bombing, situated in a damp and misty area, further protecting it from attack.

  It was also in an area of economic deprivation, providing local employment for thousands. Moreover, in terms of logistics, it had good railway links and was also relatively close to important areas: the huge South Wales coalfield and the ports of Swansea and Cardiff.

  The first phase of the construction of the Bridgend Arsenal started in 1939, though it was not until March 1940 that the factory was fully operative. The 1,000-acre site was divided into individual production groups, operating as self-contained units dealing exclusively with one kind of part for the weaponry assembly or other activity. (As in all other newer factories working with explosive material, these groupings reduced the risk of toxicity and explosion).

  The arrangement of these groups was complex: it had to take into account the storage of highly explosive powders and weapons parts, the way they could be moved around the site to the appropriate workshops, the manufacture or filling of components and their storage when they were ready to be exported to other munitions factories for assembly.

  Buildings on one side of each group had offices and changing rooms. In the centre of each group were the process workshops where the women worked. Each group was serviced by railway lines for transportation of empty and completed parts.

  The main part of the Bridgend complex, covering about 500 acres, was to the south of the site, named the Waterton area. The main administration of the Bridgend site was run from here.

  Waterton also included the Pellet Group where Betty worked, the area where yellow powder was fitted into circular pellets. Near the main entrance at Waterton was the Textiles section, where Betty worked until she turned 18. Waterton also contained the biggest canteen in the Arsenal which prepared meals and food to be served in the smaller, satellite canteen in the various groups. This canteen also had a special stage for entertainments. There was even a separate dining room with waitress service for high ranking employees.

  The northern site, Brackla, also around 500 acres, contained seven large magazines (concrete storage chambers) in tunnels 50 feet below ground. These tunnels were built to give some protection in the event of bombing as well as insulation from the effects of an accidental explosion. Open railway cuttings led to the underground magazines, this way the dangerous, yet precious cargo could be moved in and out. Brackla also had a number of sub factories, where high explosive mortars for the Army were filled and fine grain gunpowder was produced for time fuzes. (Fuzes are the machinery controlling the detonation of the main charge, usually including a detonator and a booster, initially used in anti-aircraft shells).

  The standard working week at Bridgend was 45 hours. A basic shift lasted for seven and a half hours, including 45 minutes for a meal break.

  Each shift was designated a colour (red, green and blue) and the shifts rotated weekly, in an afternoon, day and night sequence. Morning shift at Bridgend started at 7am and finished at 2.30pm. Afternoon shift was from 2.45pm to 10.15pm and night shift started at 10.30pm and finished at 6am the next day. Frequently, machines were kept running round the clock, so that workers could pick up where the previous shift had left off and precious production minutes would not be lost.

  Most of the women working at Bridgend were in their early twenties although older women in their fifties worked there too. As Betty Nettle recalls so clearly, there were also a number of men employed at Bridgend, many of them older men or those not fit enough for the Forces. (Some women resented their presence, especially if their own husbands had been called up and sent abroad).

  The women themselves came from many different areas across the country as well as from outlying areas like Maesteg, Aberdare or Pontypridd. Pay day was on Friday and wage envelopes were hand delivered. Overtime was available, though it would only be paid after a set number of hours had been worked. The overtime rate was 1- l/3rd hour’s pay for the first two hours, 1 1/2 hours pay for any other overtime worked. All hours worked on Sunday were paid at double time, overtime on Saturdays was paid at the normal weekday rates.

  Bridgend was a huge munitions enterprise: at its peak in 1942, it employed just over 32,000 people. After WW2, munitions production ceased. Eventually the site became an industrial estate, with most of the original industrial buildings demolished and new factories and homes built.

  Official figures show that 17 people (11 men, 6 women) died in accidents at Bridgend from 1941–1945. No official figures exist for the numbers of accidents that took place ther
e.

  Given the nature of the work in filling factories, injuries were often loss of fingers, hands or eyes.

  22 year old Gwen Obern was injured in an accident at Bridgend in 1940. The accident killed five people and injured l4 others when a box of detonators exploded. Gwen was blinded permanently and lost both hands in the accident — which took place on her third day of work at Bridgend.

  Afterwards, Gwen underwent 76 operations, learned Braille and became a leading light of the St Dunstan’s organization for the blind. Undaunted by her disabilities, she continues to live in Wales.

  THE ROSES OF SWYNNERTON, STAFFORDSHIRE

  (ALICE, LAURA AND IRIS’S STORIES)

  Located in a small Staffordshire village near Stone, a peaceful rural hamlet with a tiny population of about 900, the Swynnerton filling factory site was chosen as a munitions location because it was situated in an area prone to mist, making it difficult to observe from above. Construction of Swynnerton started in 1939.

  By the summer of the following year, the factory was operational: shells and bombs which had been made in other munitions factories were being sent to Swynnerton for assembly.

  Swynnerton’s workforce grew rapidly: it had 5,000 workers in 1940, many of whom had been working at the Woolwich Arsenal in London and were relocated to the new facility.

  By in the summer of 1941, the workforce totalled l5,000, reaching a peak of 18,000 a year later, the majority of whom were female. Very soon, the women working there were nicknamed The Swynnerton Roses.

  Seven miles in radius, the Swynnerton site consisted of over 2,000 small buildings, separated from each other by considerable distances. The site had its own roadway system. For safety reasons, shell or detonator filling sites were surrounded by high banks of large mounds of earth and blast walls. These were specially constructed in order to reduce the risk of one explosion triggering off yet another explosion.