Our Nell at War ,
Up early every morning to make tea for Mick, Gina, John & Mary. That was our Nell!! More like soup than tea…it was that strong, but ‘that’s the way she liked it’…. and everyone else had to like it too… or lump it. Never time for much fuss. She had to get to the factory, back to work for the shift change at 6.30, to run the lathe that made bomb shells by the thousands. These were the early years of WW2.
Nell…just one of many young woman operating machines in the dedicated bomb factory. One of hundreds of factories doing the same thing during those early dangerous days.
It was a prime target of the Luftwaffe, the industrial hub that Birmingham was. Although It was similar in all big industrial cities of Britain.
A replication of the same thing that went on in Germany too, and most likely every other country in Europe, either friend or foe, depending what side you were on.
It was hard physical work for those woman, pushing and pulling levers, of the belt driven Capstan and Turret lathes. Winding in the carriage wheel. First in one direction then out in the other, in replicated physical motion. Shell after shell as they came off the machine.
Clearing the sharp spiral steel chips and swarf, generated by the high speed steel lathe tools. White milky coolant flowing onto the tool to keep it cool, to sustain its sharpness.
It was a hard dirty messy job but it had to be done and those war time women did it!
There wasn’t much of a break from the machines during the shift. It was piece work and you had to keep up with your mates to meet the daily quota. A tedious task, whichever way you looked at it……. The epitome of tedium.
Those women became so accustomed to the replicated motion, they could doit in unison without batting an eyelid and natter at each other at the same time, even over the screetching slushing sound of flying steel chips, as the shape of the bombshell formed into its finished state. It then fell into a catchment tray, after which the same sequence of operation began again……Every few minutes to make a shell.………Hour after hour, day after day. It was indeed a tedious job.
Our Nell was a red headed bombshell herself…. in her younger days. Never said too much but always had a broad warm smile and was as kind as could be…. but you wouldn’t want to drink her tea, given the choice!! Out of courtesy you did, hiding the horror on your face, knowing the delicious cake that came with it, would deaden the taste of the thick strong, spoon supporting, stuff she called tea.
Over a cup one day, she sat down and told me about that bomb factory. Thirty odd years after the fact. What it was like to work there. Never knowing if you would go home at the end of the day… She said. Those machines had to keep on running, producing ordnance for the war effort against Nazi Germany.
Getting to the factory every day was like running a gauntlet. You had to be alert all the time. The moment the air raid siren went off, you rushed to the nearest underground shelter and if you didn’t make it in time, you might get caught in the thick of it, if the bombs fell in your area. Our street – Bracebridge Rd., survived the war without much damage but lots of areas In the Birmingham blitz were severely damaged or destroyed. Our Dad found an unexploded bomb in our back garden one day, just up from Nells place. If it had gone off…..well ????
Our factory was damaged on several occasions, said Nell, in her account of it all, but not beyond up and running in a few days.
If we had taken a direct hit …..she said. I wouldn’t be telling you this!!
One day a corner of the factory was wiped out, from a bomb that dropped too close to the building. The explosive force did the damage.
A lot of the belt line that drove the machines had been destroyed, including the boiler for the big horizontal steam engine that powered the whole factory. Despite the damage…. with our help….she said, the factory was running again within a few days, thanks to all the cursing and laughter that was part of the repair process. You would have never made it during those tedious years without a sense of humour. Our Nell had a good dose of that.
As a footnote…… I could relate to Nells descriptive narrative of the machines she operated. I spent only 6 months working on an electric motor driven version of the same type – Turret and Capstan lathes, during the second year of an apprenticeship.
As much as I disliked the tediousness of running them, they were valuable machines in their day for producing metal parts. I owned three of them in the early years of my own manufacturing company, but eventually gave in to the latest technology.
Manufacturing has evolved in leaps and bounds since the days of our Nell. Heavy metal parts are still mostly made in Lathes, but now they are digitally controlled.
In high production manufacturing environments, they are run by manipulators and robots instead of men or women and programmed by artificial intelligence.
If Nell knew all this, the healthy patch of Daisy’s that grow above her today, would probably turn to Dandelions.
MAD OBE
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