91�ȱ�

This story was submitted to the website by Karolina Kopiec from 91�ȱ� GMR Action Desk on behalf of Anne Howard and has been added to the site with her permission.

At 16 I worked at Cotton mill at Staleybridge, but they moved me onto war work. I went to work at AVCO, on no.8 capstone. We worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 7.30am-7.30pm. When I was 17, I went on night work, 12-hour shifts.

One night at 9.30pm, on Wednesday, 8 of us went out to see a film “Mrs Millriver”. We were late, and we got locked out from the factory. We got back in at 12.30am, and only then did we have dinner. It was a lesson, albeit a sad one.

My boyfriend whom I subsequently married (we had been together for 54 years) was stationed at Weston-super-Mare, with the RAF. I finished my day shift and went down to Weston, standing up all the way on the train. When I got there, he’d got vaccine fever, so I stayed for a weekend, and then went back home. I didn’t see him for a long time then, as he went to West Africa.

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