The Bomb Girls (4 page)

Mrs Yates's words proved right. By May, local girls from Pendle, Nelson, Colne and Darwin were the first at the Phoenix, arriving in buses or on the backs of trucks. Emily and Alice, who had spent most of their lives running wild over Pendle moors, decided to walk the few miles to the new munitions factory. Carrying their flimsy suitcases, they set off over the hills, recalling memories as they came across their favourite haunts. They knew exactly where to pick the first ripe, juicy winberries, the best slopes to sledge down after a heavy snowfall and the quickest crossing places over the numerous streams and brooks. As children, they'd tracked down the old ruin where the witches of Pendle had held their covens, frightening themselves to death and muttering macabre incantations on stormy Hallowe'ens. They'd played out romantic Brontë scenarios on the high tops with the wind howling around them, taking it in turn to be Anne, Charlotte and tragic Emily.

‘There won't be much fun and games where we're going,' Emily moaned as the Phoenix loomed into sight.

‘We're not here for laughs, Em,' Alice teased as she ran ahead of her friend. ‘We're here to blast Hitler to kingdom come!'

Alice and Emily were astonished at the amount of work going on at the Phoenix and the surrounding moorland. Builders and heavy machinery were everywhere, and as
they ducked between tractors and earth movers Emily spotted one of her dad's friends laying a cement foundation. Making their way through a throng of wolf-whistling builders, Emily and Alice approached him.

‘Come to admire the Phoenix complex?' he joked.

‘It's much, much bigger than I thought,' Emily said as she surveyed the sprawl of low, camouflaged buildings close to the factory.

‘Orders from the top, young Emily,' he replied. ‘We've got to get you lasses filling shell cases or we might catch the end of a bullet from Mr Churchill! All mod cons too, hot and cold water in every bedroom and indoor privies.'

Recalling the outdoor privy in their back yard at home, Emily burst out laughing.

‘That's more than I'm used to.'

Alice's silver-grey eyes were wide with wonder.

‘It's like a town within a town,' she said.

The builder nodded.

‘Everything's got to be on site, no running up and down the moors to't nearest pub in Pendle!' He turned and pointed to various scattered buildings, some finished, some half complete. ‘Over yonder's the married quarters, there's a nursery there for them with babbies. To your right are the shops and a post office, a laundry, a cinema, a pub too, even a chapel to remind you how to behave yourselves.'

‘Hard to imagine misbehaving up here miles away from anywhere!' Emily joked.

‘You lasses will find a way,' the builder chuckled. ‘You always do!'

The new munitions girls were greeted in the canteen by the factory manager, Mr Featherstone, a little man with a twirly moustache and a nervous twitch.

‘Welcome, ladies,' he started. ‘On behalf of Mr Churchill and Mr Bevin, I want to thank you all for your quick response to conscription work.'

‘Not like we had any choice,' Emily muttered under her breath.

‘Shh!' said Alice as she gave mutinous Emily a quick sideways kick.

‘You'll be working round the clock in shifts, six in the morning till two in the afternoon, two till ten, then the night shift, ten till six in the morning. For this you'll be paid between two pounds and four pounds a week, with overtime and bonuses your pay packet could amount to eight pounds.'

A few excited wolf whistles interrupted Mr Featherstone, who ploughed briskly on with his speech.

‘You'll be issued with white overalls and turbans. The colour of your turban will indicate which shift you're working on. All jewellery, grips, slides and clips are banned.' He was interrupted again by loud groans from some of the women.

‘What about us that're wed?' somebody called out.

‘Weddings rings can be worn but they must be covered with a strip of Elastoplast,' Mr Featherstone replied. ‘I cannot emphasize enough, ladies, how a tiny spark could trigger an explosion that could take out the entire factory.' He paused before he added, ‘Such an explosion happened recently in Glamorgan; the crater left behind was nearly half a mile long.' A heavy silence from the workforce
followed his sombre announcement. ‘London Bomb Girls with experience of shell-filling will be joining us this week, and please make them welcome as we need their expertise up here at the Phoenix. In conclusion, you'll find a list of your shifts and your section and the name of your hostel pinned to the canteen noticeboard.' Bowing abruptly, he ended with a terse, ‘Thank you for your cooperation.'

Emily and Alice scanned the board for their names.

‘Looks like we've been allocated a hostel off site,' Alice said.

As more than a hundred women started to peel away to their lodgings, Emily and Alice trudged up a cobbled lane to the top of a hill where they saw their new quarters tinted yellow and orange by the sun sinking slowly over the Pennines. For a few stunned seconds they were speechless then Alice burst out laughing.

‘It's a cowshed!'

Emily shook her thick auburn curls in despair.

‘Wouldn't you know it?' she groaned.

In truth, when they looked around they discovered it was an upmarket cowshed with a good roof, stone floors, hot water, indoor toilet, bathroom and three bedrooms, two double and one single. There was also an old wood burner which the farmer must have used to boil the kettle that was still stuck on top of the stove.

‘At least it doesn't smell of cow muck!' laughed Alice.

They both jumped as the door swung open, revealing little Elsie, cringing and self-conscious, blinking at them like a terrified rabbit caught in the headlights.

‘H-h-how do you do, like?' she stammered.

Emily and Alice felt desperately sorry for the new girl, who was wearing clothes hardly better than rags. Pulling Elsie gently inside they made her welcome.

‘Come in, come in. I'm Emily.'

‘And I'm Alice. Let's put the kettle on.'

Tea and toast brought a warm glow to Elsie's emaciated cheeks.

‘Ta very much,' she mumbled gratefully. ‘I haven't eaten all day,' she said, though in truth she hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours as her stepmother had refused to feed her the day before she left Gateshead.

After finishing their tea the girls explored their digs.

The double bedrooms were surprisingly spacious with high ceilings and timber-framed roofs. In each room there were two single beds side by side, two chests of drawers, a shared wardrobe and a sink with hot and cold water. Elsie gaped at the shiny new sink as if it was an alien object from another planet.

‘Does it really work?' she asked as she tested the hot and cold taps, which instantly gushed water.

‘Well, I don't think it's there for flower arrangements,' Emily joked.

‘A sink in the bedroom is a real luxury,' enthused Alice as she studied her pretty face in the mirror just over the sink.

‘All we've got at home is a rusty pump in't back yard,' Elsie exclaimed. Smiling in sheer delight, she added, ‘We can even wash our undies indoors!'

Emily was walking around the room thoughtfully tapping the external walls.

‘I bet this place is freezing in winter.'

Elsie, who seemed to find everything a joy, said, ‘There's hot-water bottles, like.'

‘And that old wood-burning stove,' said Alice as she walked back down the corridor into the sitting room. ‘We can clean it out and burn wood from the moors. I bet we could keep a kettle permanently on the boil once we've got a fire going.'

The single room was furnished in the same way as the doubles, and its only window, built into the gable end of the cowshed, gave out onto a delightful view of the rolling moors dappled in sunlight.

‘It's a proper pretty room,' said Elsie. ‘But I fancy sharing with another lass, if that's okay with you two?'

So it was decided that Alice and Emily would take the front double room whilst Elsie took the back double, which she'd share with whoever joined them next.

‘I wonder who will join us next?' said Alice.

‘Mebbe one of the lasses from London … ?' Elsie suggested.

In answer to their speculations the door was thrown open again and Lillian walked in, smartly dressed in a tight-fitting tweed suit, black felt hat and a fox fur slung over one shoulder. Alice's and Emily's first impression of Elsie was that of a lost, neglected child who needed looking after. Their impression of Lillian was that of a film star who'd walked into the wrong room.

Lillian flung off her jacket, revealing her low-cut blouse and soft, full cleavage. Scanning the room, she rolled her big brown eyes in total disgust.

‘God! What a shit hole!'

Lillian made them laugh nearly all night long. In her smart leather suitcase she had more clothes than the other three girls put together, plus a bottle of black-market brandy, cigarettes and chocolates. Elsie's eyes grew wide in delight as she tasted the first coffee cream of her life.

‘Mmm, gorgeous!' she drooled.

‘Help yourself, lovie,' said generous Lillian. ‘I'll stick with the booze and fags.'

Well after midnight they made up their beds, leaving the single room to the woman who had yet to arrive.

‘I can't tell you how hard I tried to get out of war work,' Lillian confessed as she tucked sheets under her narrow mattress. ‘I was doing just fine with my little hair salon in Bradford, singing in the local clubs and putting up with my sleazy boyfriend.'

‘I felt just the same,' Emily exclaimed. ‘Apart from the sleazy boyfriend,' she added with a laugh.

‘Mine had desert's disease,' Lillian joked.

Elsie's hazel-green eyes grew wide in concern.

‘Ooh, what's that?'

‘Wandering palms!' Lillian teased.

As Emily and Alice burst out laughing, Elsie innocently said, ‘I've never heard of wandering palms.'

Lillian shook her head, making her dangly earrings jangle.

‘We've got a little innocent here,' she said fondly. ‘It's when a fella can't stop pawing you, lovie!'

As the penny dropped, Elsie's face blazed crimson with embarrassment.

‘Oh!' she gasped as she covered her mouth to stop herself from giggling.

‘Don't worry, Elsie, you'll soon get used to me,' Lillian teased.

The following day, slightly bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, they went to the Phoenix canteen for their breakfast. As they settled around a metal table, Elsie sniffed the air appreciatively.

‘Toast and chip butties!' she exclaimed.

‘And as much tea as you can drink,' Emily added.

Swing music blared out from the canteen radio and it was hard to hear yourself speak over the babble of two hundred women and the booming strains of Glen Miller and his orchestra.

Elsie wolfed back her toast, a pint mug of tea and a chip butty, then looked embarrassed as she saw her friends had barely started their breakfast.

‘Don't you like it?' she asked self-consciously.

‘It's all right,' said Emily grudgingly. ‘I was a canteen cook not long ago and I cooked a lot better than this.'

‘It's hard making food interesting with the rationing, like,' Elsie pointed out.

‘There's nothing wrong with using your imagination even when times are hard. I'll show you how, one day soon, Elsie,' Emily promised.

Alice gave blushing Elsie a gentle shove.

‘We've got a long twelve-hour shift ahead of us; go and help yourself to seconds,' she urged.

‘Won't I get told off?' Elsie asked timidly.

‘No,' Alice replied. ‘Anybody can see you need feeding up.'

As Elsie, clutching her plate, walked shyly away to get more food Emily, Alice and Lillian looked meaningfully at each other.

‘She's a sweet kid,' Lillian said.

‘She looks like she's been half starved,' whispered Alice.

‘We'll keep an eye on her,' said Emily loyally.

‘I wonder who Girl Number Five might turn out to be?' Alice asked as she sipped her scalding tea.

‘As long as it's not my cow of a sister I don't care,' Lillian chuckled.

‘With all them southern girls due up here they're bound to fill it soon,' Emily said as she lit up her first cigarette of the day.

Lillian's thoughts were elsewhere. In between nibbling her chips she carefully scanned the male contingent in the canteen. ‘Not exactly spoilt for choice when it comes to local talent,' she lamented. ‘It's old, bald and fat or fat, bald and old.'

A dapper, middle-aged man wearing a suit and a bow tie winked at Lillian as he swung by carrying a tray.

‘Looks like you've made a conquest,' Alice giggled.

‘If he knows a good spiv on the black market he'll do for starters,' Lillian answered with a saucy wink.

After breakfast Emily, Alice, Elsie and Lillian donned their white overalls and the big boots that reduced friction on the stone factory floor.

‘We look like fellas!' laughed Lillian.

‘No jewellery, pins, grips or slides!' yelled a male voice.

As the girls turned to see who their overseer was, they were surprised to recognize the man who'd winked at Lillian in the cafeteria.

Lillian gave him a sulky look but she'd already removed her earrings and watch. As they scrunched their hair into turbans, Lillian purposefully flicked her fringe onto her face.

‘Haven't we got to cover all of our hair?' Elsie asked nervously.

Lillian winked.

‘Haven't you heard of Canary Girls, Elsie?' she asked.

‘Stop teasing me, Lillian,' Elsie giggled.

‘I'm not teasing, it's the truth,' Lillian insisted. ‘The cordite we're working with bleaches exposed hair yellow-blonde – just like a canary!' Wagging her loose fringe, she added, ‘What's wrong with a bit of free hair colour when you're miles away from a beauty salon?'

Elsie smiled shyly as she too released a bit of her fringe … If only her dad could see her now!

As the girls approached their section, Alice noticed the floor was wet through.

‘Has a pipe burst?' she asked.

The overseer, Malc, shook his head.

‘We keep the air moist and the floor damp to reduce the chance of explosions,' he replied.

Emily, Alice, Elsie and Lillian looked at each other, all
laughter and banter gone. This was their war work, dangerous at every turn. There was no going back now.

To the accompaniment of
Workers' Playtime
and
Music While You Work
, Emily, Alice, Elsie and Lillian worked their section monitored by a temporary supervisor. Bomb cases, ninety-nine to a pallet, came rolling down the conveyor belt towards the girls, who filled them to a specified level with cordite then inserted an empty tube for the detonator. Further down the line the detonators were loaded in the tube then the bomb cases were hooked onto an overhead conveyor belt that carried them around the factory floor.

‘Where do they go now?' Alice asked Malc, the overseer.

‘They're loaded into ammunition boxes and flown out to our lads working the Howitzers on the front line,' he replied.

Alice's heart skipped a beat; she'd already packed cordite into nearly thirty shell cases, bombs that could take out a family, a home, a life. She knew there were German women packing cordite into identical shell cases in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and other places all over Germany, just like British Bomb Girls assembling explosives in munitions factories all over her own country. Alice sighed. How many thousands of women would pack how many millions of bombs before this hideous war was over?

That first shift was long, exhausting and repetitive.

‘I know I've got the attention span of a gnat,' groaned Lillian. ‘But this has got to be the most boring job in the world.'

Without stopping shovelling cordite into the bomb cases passing before her on the conveyor belt, Elsie answered happily, ‘It's interesting!'

‘INTERESTING!' Lillian screeched. ‘Depends what you were doing previously, love.'

‘Cooking, cleaning, cooking, cleaning, getting belted if I weren't cooking and cleaning,' Elsie replied with remarkable cheerfulness.

Lillian exchanged a look with Emily and Alice on either side of her and quickly backtracked.

‘Well, if you put it that way I can see that this would be a bundle of laughs, Elsie,' she laughed.

The government-backed shows on the radio and regular breaks in the canteen, where they could help themselves to endless mugs of sweet tea and free food, lifted the workers' spirits but by 10 p.m. Emily, Alice, Elsie and Lillian were on their knees.

‘I just want to go home and sleep,' groaned Emily.

Alice, who hated to be dirty or untidy, scowled at the yellow stains on her slender fingers.

‘We've got to get this stinking cordite off our hands first,' she insisted.

‘A woman on another section told me to scrub milk and cold tea onto the yellow,' Lillian said.

Emily yawned and shook her head.

‘Right now, I don't care – I'm going to bed.'

‘If you go without cleaning it off you'll stain your sheets yellow,' Lillian warned.

Emily laughed as she said, ‘Maybe I'll sing like a canary and keep you awake all night!'

It was nearly eleven by the time they made their way up
the cobbled track to their digs, where they found all the lights on. Inside Agnes, who was exhausted by her journey north, was curled up fast asleep on the sofa. She jumped up when her room mates entered and blinked at them in surprise.

‘Hello,' she mumbled. ‘I'm Agnes. I've been transferred from the Woolwich Arsenal.'

Emily, Elsie, Lillian and Alice were visibly taken aback. Agnes was a good ten years older than them; she was sallow-skinned and thin; her clothes resembled the style of the thirties rather than the forties, and her black-metal, bottle-top glasses hid the beauty of her large eyes.

Alice was the first to remember her manners.

‘You must be exhausted,' she said as she poked the embers in the wood burner and filled the kettle. ‘I'll make some tea.'

Elsie opened the tin that contained Emily's delicious carrot and coconut buns.

‘We've got some cake,' she said with relish. ‘Proper good cake, home-made, like.'

Agnes gratefully accepted their generosity but there was an awkwardness in the room, especially when she announced she might be their line supervisor.

‘Oh, that's good,' said Emily flatly.

‘Great!' muttered Lillian under her breath. ‘Nothing like living with the boss.'

Alice glared at her whilst Emily gave her a kick. Sensing their discomfort, Agnes rose.

‘I think I'll go to bed,' she said tiredly.

Kind, sensitive Elsie leaped to her feet.

‘You've got the single room,' she told Agnes as they made their way down the corridor. ‘It's got a belting view, like, when it's not raining.'

Lillian scowled as she lit a Woodbine.

‘Bloody hell,' she seethed. ‘Now we'll have to be on our best sodding behaviour all the time!' She blew out some smoke before adding scornfully, ‘And where did she get those terrible clothes from?'

‘You can't always go by looks,' sweet little Elsie chided as she returned to her friends gathered round the crackling warm stove. ‘I looked like a rag and bone man when I arrived,' she added with a giggle.

‘Well, at least we gave her the single room,' Lillian remarked. ‘It'd be a nightmare waking up to the bloody boss every morning!'

Elsie, in awe of Agnes's age and experience, kept a respectful distance whilst Alice was curious, especially when she caught sight of a framed photograph on Agnes's bedside table with a little knitted dolly propped up beside it. The picture was of a little girl, aged about two or three years old, with long, dark silky hair, a wide happy smile and big brown eyes fringed with thick dark lashes.

‘She's beautiful,' Alice told Emily. ‘She must be related. She has the same dark looks as Agnes.'

‘She never talks about her family,' Emily said.

‘Maybe something terrible happened to them,' Alice replied.

‘Best not to mention them until she does,' Emily warned.

Agnes was strict and tight-lipped on the factory floor too; she worked her section hard whilst keeping an eye
out for their safety. During her second week, Agnes approached Elsie.

‘Can I have a word with you?' she asked.

Elsie's eyes grew wide as she was escorted off the factory floor.

‘Have I done something wrong? Am I in trouble? Please don't send me home,' she gabbled in terror.

In a quiet corner of the canteen, Agnes assured Elsie, who was by this time almost hysterical, that all was well.

‘It's nothing to panic about,' she said gently. ‘I'm just concerned that you're working too hard.'

Elsie wiped away her tears and smiled, and when she did so her lovely green eyes were filled with happiness. Grabbing Agnes's hands, she squeezed them tightly.

‘I love my work,' she cried. ‘I love the Phoenix and all my friends in the digs.'

Agnes patted Elsie's chapped hands.

‘At the rate you're going, I'm afraid you'll burn yourself out.'

‘I'm not frightened of hard work,' Elsie insisted. ‘If the truth be known, I've never been so happy in my whole life!'

Intrigued by her reply, Agnes asked, ‘And why's that, Elsie? Munitions work isn't exactly a picnic.'

Elsie replied with her usual innocent candour.

‘I love not living at home and I love my new friends. I couldn't ask for more.'