My War Effort: Working in Witney Making Aeroplane Pumps

I was still at school when war broke out and stayed on until I was 16. When I had finished I volunteered to work in a factory in Witney making pumps for aeroplanes.

There were 6 of us from Lechlade who all worked in the same place, we used to leave home before 7 o'clock in the morning to take the train to get to Witney, sometimes we would wiat for hours for a train and then in the evenings it was worse, we would have to wait for the London train to go first and then hope that one would come for us. On Sundays there weren't any trains at all and we used to get picked up in a van and dropped home again in the evening. The winter was the worst because we wouldn't even see Lechade, leaving and arriving in the dark, with the blackout meant that we didn't see anybody or anything.

My sister had volunteered to be an ambulance driver, unfortunately that didn't work out and she ended up driving the baker's van instead, and driving for the LVF in the evening. Sadly she was killed in a motoring accident just after the end of the war.

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