Tiny and slight, five foot ten in her stockinged feet, and recently recovered from tuberculosis, she left the small mining town of Maesteg in South Wales for Birmingham, to work on producing Spitfires at the Vickers Armstrong factory in Castle Bromwich.

She was given the job of operating a capstan lathe in order to produce parts for Spitfires.  In later years, under the Sex Discrimination Act, this work was exempted, being considered too heavy for women to do.

The work was exhausting, the hours long, sometimes working for seven days a week. The factory was a target for bombing and although my mother was not on the front line there were very real dangers.

Even so, there were benefits.  The work was higher in status than that available to women of her class and education in peacetime and attracted higher wages (though not as much as male workers were paid for similar work,  by agreement with the unions).  The factory provided free healthcare which was not available in civilian life. 

She also enjoyed the camaraderie, the freedom and access to an enjoyable social life – in particular she loved films and dances.  It illustrates the limits on what was allowed for and expected of working-class women before and after the war that many described the war years as the best years of their lives.

A few years later, my grandmother was conscripted for work in Bridgend Arsenal, luckily as an orderly in the medical unit.  Luckily because Bridgend Arsenal was a munitions factory and munitions works was exceptionally dangerous. 

Since World War !, people had been aware of the dangers as a result of incidents such as that experienced in the Barnbow factory in Leeds: in 1916 a massive explosion killed thirty-five women outright and maimed and injured many more. There were similar incidents elsewhere.  In World War II. At least a hundred and fifty munitions workers, mostly women, were killed in explosions, though exact numbers are hard to ascertain due to wartime secrecy. Many others were maimed or injured.

In addition to dangers from explosions, there were huge risks for munitions workers as a result of exposure to TNT.  Workers’ skin turned yellow as a result and pregnant women gave birth to yellow babies.  Many women’s health was seriously damaged as a result of exposure to dangerous chemicals.

At the end of the war women returned to civilian life.  After the men returned to take on the jobs they’d done in wartime, their skills were no longer recognised and needed.  Though their contribution to the war effort had been massive, there was no real formal recognition of that, including lack of recognition of those who had been killed injured or suffered serious health problems as a result of the work they had done.

For my mother and grandmother, work opportunities were further limited as a result of their exclusion from much of the workforce as a result of attitudes to their hearing impairment – which had not been considered a serious barrier during wartime.

It was not until 2012 that organisations representing the women factory workers were allowed to join Remembrance Day parades.