Reserved Occupations

Delivering the Milk.

My brother and I used to deliver the milk all round Minchinhamton and Amberley by a horse drawn cart... Any...

My Grandparents

As a Special Policeman, my Granfather often had to bring home the police dogs and they were kenneled in my...

A Bevin Boy in Warwickshire [J.Hughes]

If he didn't go he would be imprisoned, so rather than be a prisoner he became a coal miner. He was put...

A Reluctant Conscript 1944-48 Part 8

It was when Dandy and I were walking to work along the dark, lonely ventilation roadway that I made some...

Liverpool May Blitz

My Mum and her family lived in Edge Hill close to the sidings at Edge Hill station where her Father worked...

Life on the Home Front

We went to South Elmsall Hall to do the training which was done by trainers from the regular army....

Boilers and Bombs in Swindon Railways Works

I was on apprentices money but with war work and overtime I got more money than the boiler makers....

Evacuees and Stew!

We had evacuees staying with us for the whole of the war — the Grandmother and most of the children...

Life in World War II: Working in the Steel Industry

In the war I worked in the steel industry whitch was a reserved occupation this mean't that I did not...

My Start To The War

I lived with my Grandmother, Emily Long and Parents, Bernard and Doris Goodall in Ebenezer Street for about...

Wood Ditton during World War II

Prior to World War II the small east Cambridgeshire village of Wood Ditton had been a quiet agricultural...

My Dad's Army

My father, Harold Austen, was a motor mechanic with the East Kent Road Car Company at Westwood,...

No Miners in the Navy

Leslie was a miner throughout the war but had originally tried to join the navy, he went into Nottingham to...

Reserved Occupation

Story told by Ted Peare. This story rectifies the errors that occurred in Article ID A1141976....

A Travelling Joiner In Scotland

To begin with in Dundee, I was working for the builder, Albert Thain. Edward Farningham via Dundee Central...

Driving to Spandau

I went into the Army just after the war, I was in the Duke of Wellington's and stationed in Berlin......

Exercise Invasion

My father was 29 at the outbreak of WW2, but was in a reserved occupation, building cranes, excavators and...

W. H. Allen's - WW2

One day a fellow worker found an incendiary bomb on his way to the factory and brought it in - unexploded....

Block Mills Disaster

The Dockyard area was of course the primary target, but quite a number of stray bombs landed on homes in...

Accident on the Thames

My father, now deceased, was in a reserved occupation and in 1943 he was working from scaffold painting one...

On the Right Track!! - Train Driver's Story, Sheffield

I wonder how many people realise that in order to refuel the train engines with coal, firemen had to try to...

Dunkirk: Little Ships from Chatham Dockyard

As Jack was a dockyard worker, he was not called up for military service,I remember him telling me how,...

Night-Shift Work at 15 Years-Old

I started work in George Wade,Manchester Pottery for 6 nights a week 8pm to 8am for £2 per week when I...

A Bevan Boy's memory

My brother Albert was 16 in 1942 and he was called up and sent down the coal mines as a Bevan Boy...

The Only Plumber in Hemsworth

My husband was a plumber in Hemsworth, he worked at Hanleys, they said because he was the only plumber in...

The Billiard Room

One day some Oranges arrived, and mum could hardly contain her excitement, as oranges had not been seen for...