Women in the Second World War by Collette Drifte

Author:Collette Drifte [Drifte, Collette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War II, Modern, General, Biography & Autobiography, Historical
ISBN: 9781844687466
Google: DChtDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2011-06-13T00:42:27+00:00

Occasionally we went to the pictures, but we had no money, you know. Often my parents subbed me, which they shouldn't have done, but [the pay] was only £1.18s a fortnight. We found a little place in Liverpool, run by a Christian society who served us beans on toast for 4d so things were relative, I suppose, but we didn't have a lot of money. A lot of times we just had to stay in, or we just went for a walk or something, but the raids were on, so mostly we were down in the cellars. The Americans took over the Birkdale Palace Hotel and Lord Derby's place at Sefton. We were invited there, and they even had Lord Derby's butler, so when we went in, we used to see this butler there. We'd go for dances and I remember the floor was covered in sugar because it was falling off the doughnuts there was so much of it. They had everything – they must've brought all the food from America. I used to think, ‘These ships should be carrying vital supplies’, but they were carrying every luxury under the sun! It could be hairy when you went there because they were always after other things, if you get what I mean. When the ships came into dock for cleaning, or whatever, the crew had to leave, but they always had a skeleton crew left, and the officers used to invite us for a meal. That was nice because we got waited on. We'd really go for the food, but sometimes, again, it was hairy! We were taken over some of the ships and we realised how confined they were, and it was all grey. They were all painted with camouflage so everything was dark and dull. Once there was a U-boat. They'd captured it and it was in Liverpool, and we were taken over that. It was claustrophobic with very little room – I'd have hated to be in a submarine. I think they took it up the Manchester Ship Canal, on the surface, for exhibition; it was a sort of morale booster that they'd caught this U-boat intact.

I was still at school when war broke out, and at first it was all quiet. But then we had quite a lot of bombs around us. My stepfather had under the stairs reinforced and we used to go under that. There was a big communal air raid shelter nearby but my stepfather wouldn't go in it. A landmine was dropped and everyone in the shelter was killed; not a mark on them, the air had been sucked out of their lungs. We had our windows blown out and I remember we had a little radio and that was blown across the [room] but we weren't hurt at all. Leslie [Janet's future husband] had just started work then in Liverpool and he had to go on fire watch. He was up on the roof when the whole place went ablaze, and he said that in some ways it was scarier than the raids.

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