Bomb Girls--Britain's Secret Army

by Jacky Hyams

  I really don’t know if other families were like ours in being so close. Some girls in my factory were glad to get away from home because young girls were very restricted then, in what they could or couldn’t do. But for me, the separation meant that some of my war work was not a happy experience.

  Nothing to do with the job, it was just me.

  CHAPTER 9

  ALICE’S STORY: FANCYPANTS

  ‘EVEN THE WHITES OF YOUR EYES WOULD BE YELLOW’

  Alice Butler was born in Burslem, Stoke on Trent, in 1925. One of a family of seven growing up in The Potteries, she started work in a tile factory at 14 – until she was called up to work at ROF Swynnerton, the big filling factory some 17 miles from her home. Alice filled bullets and smoke bombs at Swynnerton for over three years – until she was moved to a section filling explosive charges for the last nine months of the war. At 21, she married Tom Porter, a blacksmith in the local mine, Whitfield Colliery. Tom died in 2005, age 88. Alice has two daughters, two granddaughters, two grandsons and two great granddaughters. This is her story:

  We were very poor as I was growing up. My youngest sister, June, always used to joke that if we were robbed, the burglar would have left us something – he’d have felt that sorry for us. There were seven children in our home – I was the third. My dad, Joseph, was a miner, but there wasn’t work for him all the time until the war broke out and production was stepped up. Dad was also a rescue man for the pit.

  This was how we lived: no electricity, only gas lamps; an outside toilet. Going out there in the middle of the night in the freezing cold, you’d try to hold yourself in if you could, it was that cold. A tiny little kitchen with a well in it – that was your water supply. A proper wash in a tin bath in front of the coal fire once a week.

  Yet my dad was a fantastic cook: he tried to join up in the First World War, but they said he was too young, so they’d put him to work in the kitchens. As a result, Dad could make a tasty meal out of virtually anything. He didn’t earn much at all but we never went hungry.

  At Middleport School in Dale Hall, near Burslem, what was I good at? Well, history and domestic science. We were allowed to cook at school and that meant something to us because I could take what was left home to the family, so they could all eat it. That gives you an idea how poor we were.

  If I tell you we all lived in a two-bedroomed house, two adults and seven children, you’d probably think ‘how awful’ – but you’d be wrong: we were happy. If you don’t know otherwise, you get used to things like sharing a bed all the time. My sister Marina, who was 10 years younger than me, used to pee on me sometimes. I’d never slept in a bed on my own in my entire life until my husband Tom died.

  Our neighbours were smashing. You never locked your door, there was no need. If anyone was in trouble, they didn’t gossip about it behind their hands, they helped each other. My best friend, Freda, was in the same class as me and we became firm friends. And my three brothers, Joseph, James and George, always looked out for me. When I grew up and started going out dancing, James would always come and meet me afterwards. They were very protective.

  At 14, I left school on the Friday and started working on the Monday at H & R Johnsons, a tile factory, at four shillings a week. By then, Joe and Jim were working in the pit, which meant money coming into the house regularly – for the first time, really. So by 1938, the year I was starting to work, I actually had enough money to buy new clothes; I could start to dress up a bit. I always loved dressing up – I still do. My nickname was ‘Fancy Pants’!

  All the talk around was of war but I don’t recall we were too troubled by it – until it actually happened. The day war was declared, Dad, Joe, Jim, George and I were at Burslem Swimming Baths; we’d all learned to swim at school. We literally came running out of the water, dripping wet, at the point the news came through on the radio. Dad was very upset. I couldn’t understand why at the time, but years later I discovered the truth: he’d lost his brother William at the Battle of the Somme in the First World War, when over a million people were killed.

  For me, a 15-year-old, the idea that we were fighting a war was bewildering. And upsetting. Freda had gone to work at a place called Kents in Burslem, where they made elements for gas fires. By the time I was nearly 16, Freda was earning more money than me in the tile factory. So I decided to leave Johnsons and go to work for Kents. I was at home, between jobs, when the letter came saying I’d been called up. I was not yet 18 but the letter told me I would be employed in munitions at Swynnerton, the big filling factory. Had I not decided to switch and carried on working at Johnsons, who knows? I might not have been called up.

  At first, when war broke out, I’d liked the idea of being a Land Girl: I’ve always loved gardening. The idea continued to appeal to me even once I’d started working at Swynnerton. In fact, even after I’d started there, I went down to the Labour Exchange a couple of times and asked if I could switch jobs and work as a Land Girl. But the answer was, ‘No, your work’s more important’. It was too late. But then, I’d have had to leave home to be a Land Girl, of course, which I wouldn’t have welcomed.

  Working at Swynnerton involved a 17-mile journey to work every day. We’d catch a bus up to Burslem Station, then a train to Cold Meece, the passenger-only railway line that was specially built to transport the girls to and from Swynnerton. Then another bus would take us to Swynnerton. I didn’t know what to expect, working there, so I wasn’t too worried about the work. I didn’t know at the time, but the worst thing would come later on – working with the yellow powder.

  That first day we all went into a big room to be issued with our security passes. ‘Bring these every time you come to work or else you won’t be allowed in,’ we were warned. And sure enough, you’d be searched going in and even when you were just coming off your shift. When you started work, you went into a big changing room, took your normal clothes off and put on trousers and an overall. Your hair had to be completely covered, no clips or jewellery, so you’d put it up with a bit of elastic. Ciggies and matches were forbidden, too: you had a little hut where you could leave them while you worked. One spark could set things off. We were working with danger.

  It was lonely at first in this big place with hundreds and hundreds of women working in different sections. Freda wasn’t around either – she hadn’t been called up for munitions because she had her job at Johnsons. As an under-18, they started me as what they called a ‘first filler of bullets’ on a production line. There was a first filler, then a second filler, then a third person to put the cap on.

  You worked behind a little protective screen. You had a tray of bullets to fill. First, you put the bullet in; you filled it up with grey gunpowder. A machine came down and pressed it. Then, when your tray was full, it went off to the second filler. You had to wear a turban to completely protect your hair, but there was nothing to protect your hands from the powder you were using, though you could try to wash it off.

  We weren’t supposed to talk about Swynnerton or what we did there. The powder, even with the turban on, would still have a nasty habit of discolouring your hair. I was in Boots one day and this woman said to me: ‘Ooh love, have you dyed your hair and it’s gone wrong?’ But you couldn’t say: ‘Oh, I work in munitions.’ You’d just smile and say nothing.

  Once I turned 18 at the end of 1942, they decided to move me to another section. This time I was filling smoke bombs. Gunpowder was poured into a big machine then the machine would deposit a set amount of gunpowder into a smoke bomb casing. My job was to take one smoke bomb at a time, put it at the bottom of the machine full of gunpowder, then operate the machine to pour the set amount of gunpowder into the casing. Then it was passed on to the next section for someone to put the next filling in.

  It was very repetitive work, and you were often moved around the section. I remember one woman, she got so tired, she kept falling off her stool. Little things like that would happen and you’d all start laughing, of course. Anything to break
the monotony, which would usually alert the supervisor. I can still hear her now: ‘Seeing as you’re laughing, you can get on that machine NOW!’

  The production line never stopped. As one shift went off – I was on Blue Shift – so another shift was coming on; it was all going 24 hours a day, every day. The factory was so huge, I had a friend working there, also on Blue Shift, but we never saw each other at work. That’s how enormous the place was.

  The pay was very good: £6 and six shillings for one week of nights. You’d turn the money over to your parents. I got six shillings back from my mother, and she also paid for my clothes out of the £6. So I could still be Fancy Pants.

  There were a lot of married women working with me. They’d say things and laugh amongst themselves and I didn’t always understand what they were on about. One day, one woman said: ‘I’m skint, I’ve got no money. I’ll have to go down Broad’s Corner.’ This was said as a joke, of course, because a few women laughed. But I didn’t realise what she meant.

  That time, I went home after work and repeated it. ‘Where’s Broad’s Corner, Mum?’ I asked, all innocence.

  ‘DON’T YOU DARE SAY THINGS LIKE THAT!’ was my mother’s response. ‘That’s where all the prostitutes go!’

  I didn’t say any more, but it took a bit of asking around to find out what a prostitute was. A lot of us didn’t know anything then. But not everyone at work was that innocent. Two of the girls in my section got pregnant while they were working at Swynnerton; the rumour was they’d been going with American soldiers. They didn’t sack the girls or anything like that. The girls went off and had the babies and the babies went into homes. Then the girls came back to work. One day, one of the girls I was talking to in the canteen told me: ‘This American told me you didn’t get pregnant if you did it standing up.’

  I definitely wasn’t the only innocent one.

  My brothers were always warning me too: ‘If I catch you with an American, you’ll be for it!’ warned my brother George. He was just being a big brother, of course, but all this talk was enough to make me see I’d be better off steering clear of the American soldiers. They seemed to be everywhere by then and they would try to chat you up at any opportunity.

  ‘Can I walk you home?’ one said to me as I was walking home one day.

  I already had my answer off pat.

  ‘Oh, I’m spoken for.’

  But they wouldn’t give up.

  ‘I’m only taking you home.’

  I’d say: ‘Have you got a girlfriend? Would you like someone taking her home?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Well, there you are then.’

  That usually worked!

  But with so many men away from home, there were temptations for some women. A woman living near us had a baby while her husband was away in the war, but he forgave her. That sort of thing went on all the time. And with three young men in our house, girls were always after them. If a girl fancied one of them, they wouldn’t hold back, they’d just knock on our door and say: ‘Oh, can I have a drink of water, please?’

  I’d know what that meant.

  ‘JOE!’ I’d yell at my brother. ‘It’s for you!’

  The worst part of it all was working nights. And the blackout. At work, you’d be closed in completely, no light other than inside the section where we worked. You couldn’t show even the tiniest chink of light. You couldn’t even open a door like you could during the day, in case the light revealed where we were to the planes above. Even if you went to the toilet, someone went with you just to be on the safe side. The Germans knew Swynnerton was there – and what it was. They tried hard to get us, but they kept missing.

  Everywhere was closed in and dark during those night shifts while we worked away. When we’d hear the air raid siren, our first reaction would be: ‘Oh good, we can stop work and have a rest.’ And off we’d go, trooping down to the big underground shelter; everyone down there until the all-clear. You weren’t allowed to take anything in with you, though. So we’d chat amongst ourselves, and very often, someone would start singing – and we’d all join in.

  At home, if the sirens went off, we had our air raid shelter in the garden. I’d get home from my early shift in the late afternoon and I’d be so tired, I’d fall asleep before you could bat your eye, I was that exhausted. And wouldn’t you know, the next thing – or it seemed like that – the sirens would go off. Just when I’d gone and fallen asleep in my bed.

  ‘SIRENS’VE GONE!’ someone would yell. And so I’d stumble into the Anderson shelter and go back to sleep again until the all-clear. Then I’d go back to bed again. You got used to that topsy-turvy life.

  About nine months before the end of the war, they moved me to a section where you worked filling paper tubes with explosive material in the form of a yellow powder. You weren’t directly told that this yellow powder was going to affect your skin but you were only allowed to work in that section for a week, then you had a month off the section. And you were tested by a doctor after the week working with it. He tested your breathing, your blood pressure, so it was obvious to everyone that they knew it was a dangerous, toxic chemical.

  Yet the effect of working with it didn’t happen all at once. It was gradual. Your skin, your hands, your hair, everything gradually went yellow. Even the whites of your eyes would be yellow. So then you’d go off the section and work elsewhere. Then, just when it was beginning to fade, the month would be up and you’d have to go back to the section to work with it again.

  We were given thick pancake Max Factor ‘cake’ makeup for our faces because it was supposed to protect your skin when you worked with the yellow powder. But it didn’t protect your skin. Some of the girls would try to sneak the pancake makeup home, even though we were searched coming out every shift. They just wound up looking like ghosts with all the pancake on, that was all.

  One good thing we did have was the dinner. They made sure we had a good feed in the canteen. Now and again, you’d be sitting in the canteen and someone would shout ‘CAKES!’ and you’d leap out of your seat and run up to get them to take home. For some reason, you were allowed to take the cakes out of the building.

  In the canteen we’d sometimes play cards, or dominoes. At times they’d organise a big dance with the soldiers from the base nearby at Trentham. I loved the quickstep; Glen Miller’s ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. I’d wear a favourite brown and cream dress with inverted pleats with very high heels. Now and again I’d resort to using gravy browning to draw a seam down the middle of the back of my stockings – that meant they were ‘fully fashioned’. But not often.

  One night I went to a dance in Hanley with my friend Freda and we got chatting to two boys. One called Tom told me he was a blacksmith, which was a reserved occupation, so he didn’t get called up. Tom wanted to take me home when the dance finished. ‘Oh, our Jim fetches me,’ I told him. And that was the end of it.

  But Tom wasn’t going to give up that easily. A week later I was at the Baths in Burslem – and he turned up there. I don’t know how he found out I went there but he was a fantastic diver. And I already knew he was a nice dancer. Tom was eight years older than me but from that point on, we started courting. I’d had one boyfriend before, a friend of my brother Jim, but it had fizzled out. He’d lived in the same street, but he wasn’t a dancer.

  Tom would meet me at Burslem station when I’d finished the afternoon shift and he’d walk me home. It was a three-mile walk from where he lived to Burslem but we were young. And both dead keen on each other. The first time I met Tom’s mother – my future mother-in-law – I’d been working a week with the yellow powder.

  ‘Alice, is there a bit of Chinese in you?’ she asked me. And she was serious!

  There were a lot of accidents, though I never actually witnessed one. It could be really scary if someone accidentally dropped a detonator. You’d hear the shout: ‘DETONATOR’S FALLEN!’ When you heard that, everyone had to freeze. No one could move an inch until they’d picked up
the detonator.

  My friend Doris worked in the cordite section and lost the end of her finger in an accident. But mostly, the bosses kept any bad accidents very secret. But of course, we’d know if there’d been something bad happening because of the security. On one occasion we were all in the changing room when we were told we just had to stay there: we were waiting there for an hour.

  ‘Oh, they’re not ready for you yet,’ was the official excuse. But afterwards, word got out: there’d been an accident. A bad one.

  We did have a good foreman called Albert. He treated the girls nicely. I always used to think that somehow the men in the factory had an easier job than the women, we were on the production line working away all the time; to me it seemed their jobs were a little bit easier. But we’d never say anything, of course. It was incredibly tiring working those shifts week in, week out. I already had poor circulation. You were usually exhausted when you got home.

  Everything was strictly monitored and checked. It really was the kind of security where no chances were taken – ever. One day I turned up without my identification card. Stupidly, I’d left it at home. They’d seen me turning up for my shift every day, they knew my face, but they were still obliged to question me: who are your mother and father? That sort of thing. You’d get fed up with it, of course. But there was a war on and nothing could be overlooked. I never left it at home again!

  Our families were involved, too. My mum wound up working in munitions at the small arms ammunition factory at Radway Green, in Cheshire, but the work wasn’t as dangerous as Swynnerton, though she never told me what she did there. She was a strong woman, my mum. Tom’s sister Annie also worked on munitions at Radway Green. Her husband was a PoW for four years; skin and bone when he came home. But at least he came home.