There was talk of war. I remember quite well seeing the soldiers marching through the village recruiting men and, as the band was playing, the local men would fall in line behind them to join up. Joe came home and said he was joining up as his master was a Captain in the Territorial Army and that he would go with him as his batman. So he said goodbye to us all and Mother was very quiet.

The war started, as we all know, in 1914, and not long after, Joe was reported killed. My parents were not officially told so, but their grief was plain to see. Father wrote to the War Office and they said that they had not been informed. In fact, it all turned out that he was all right. We had what they called a field card from him and that allayed all fears. But it was then that Mother turned to my father and said " Joe, I’ve been thinking. If our George had lived, he would have had to go to this war and he might have been killed". Mother had been nursing her grief all these years to herself, but she now seemed to put all the past behind her, and she seemed a different woman.

I was late one afternoon fetching Norman from school. He came skipping down the road and said that he knew where there was an empty house, but in mournful tones, he said it had a lot of rates on it. I told my mother, and she said scornfully "What does he know about rates?". In the morning I would get Norman to show me where it was.

Well, he did show me! It was a lovely semi-detached house called Kylemore situated on the right hand side at the top of Finchfield Hill.  He pointed to the ornate roofing tiles – that was what he thought were the rates!

The top of Finchfield Hill today. "Kylemore" has not been identified but Finchfield was growing at the time with a variety of mostly substantial houses like these.

I told Mother about the house and she decided to come with me to fetch Norman home in the afternoon. She was over the moon with the house and it was in a nice area. She told Father to go to the agent on his way home from work the next day to enquire about the rent and rates. It was more than Mother wanted to pay but she said that they were all growing up and she wanted us to have the best.

We moved yet again. We had all mod. cons. - bathroom, hot water, seven rooms and large garden. It was great. Father also acquired an allotment. It was a field ploughed up so that people could have plots to "dig for victory" as they called it.

Things to eat were getting scarce. I remember that meat was almost unobtainable at one time. I remember, too, that our coffee was made from parsnips - washed and grated and baked on trays until dark brown, and then rolled fine with the rolling pin. Two teaspoons of that made a lovely cup of coffee. Jam was also scarce. Mother had always made her own - about sixty pounds at a time. There was no sugar, so Mother made it from sugar beet. I had to fetch the beet from the farm.

Father got the allotment dug and was producing all our vegetables. We also kept a dozen or more hens at the bottom of the garden for our eggs.

By 1915, I was fourteen and ready to go to work – but to do what? I had not been to school for four years, although Mother had taught me a lot herself. She would always hear me read and I had to reckon up the grocery as it came in. I was fond of history and map drawing. Dad came home one day and said I had to go and see the manager of a shop in Queen Street, Wolverhampton. It turned out to be a manufacturing chemist. He looked me up and down – and said I was to start the next Monday.

It was a place down an alley. The head one took me in – it was November, and it was so cold it was like an icebox. There was no heat whatsoever and the smell of the chemicals was most unpleasant. I didn’t like it a bit! My first job was bottling cough mixture and, whether it was the smell or the cold, I don’t know – but I promptly fainted! I remember that when I came round, having been given Sal volatile, they lit a little gas ring and tried to get me warm. However, you were not allowed to give up easily at our house and I had to stick it out for a few more weeks! Fortunately, materials for making medicines and boot polishes and black lead and such like, became scarce, and so I was moved into another part of the shop which dealt with grocery "dry goods". And so for a few more weeks, all was well … until I was told to tell customers that we hadn’t got this or we hadn’t got that, when all the time it was under the counter. This I could not stand and I told the manager that I had been brought up to tell the truth and that I could not tell lies for him. (This, by the way, was for a wage of 8/- a week, and I had to walk two miles to work, and two miles back, because I couldn’t afford the four pence bus fare.)

The war did not look like finishing as soon as they had thought and everyone was getting tired of low wages in shops and was leaving to go onto munitions work. Flossie left her job as a saleswoman and got a job in a munitions factory as a forewoman. This always amused us, because she didn’t know one end of a hammer from the other! She got me a job there. I had to view work as it came off the machines and tell them if their work would not go on the gauge. They were all elderly women there and, being the youngest, they took to me and were very kind. We were all dressed in khaki overalls and cap, while Flossie, as forewoman, wore blue overalls.

Now it was seven miles to work in the morning but, as Flossie got £2 a week, she could afford a ride on the bus, but me - only getting 10/- a week - had to walk both ways! I was a big girl and soon they put me on a turret lathe making pellets; and then onto another drilling machine. I was soon on the biggest machine making shell cases. I was very willing to do this as I thought it was all for the war effort, but when I asked for more money, I was told I was not old enough to claim more money.

I was a growing girl and was feeling the strain of walking home all those miles after working so hard all day, and only having sandwiches to eat at midday, and sometimes there would only be soup for my dinner when I got home. Something inside me rebelled. I told my mother that I had had enough and that I was going to get a job where I could put my feet under someone else’s table. I shall never forget the look on my mother’s face, she was so cross with me and said I should be ashamed to say such a thing. "Well, my girl, I’ll get you a job in service, and I can tell you, you’re never to come home bellyaching again".

I felt awful, but into service I did go. I went as a "Between Maid" at Astbury Hall, Chelmarsh, near Bridgnorth, where there were three other maids kept. I went to Bridgnorth by the G.W.R. bus and was met at the station by a groom with a dog cart – it was a high trap affair. I arrived about teatime. The cook was a surprise to me, thinking I was going to meet a rather stout lady, but she was very thin with a rather high stomach. She eyed me up and down. "Well", she said, "I expect you could do with some tea".

I went up those three flights of stairs to unpack my dress basket, for that’s what my things were packed in, got out a print dress and white apron my mother had made, picked up my working apron which was made from hessian with a fitted waistband, changed my shoes for a pair of flat shoes which were called "ward shoes", and went down into the kitchen ready to do whatever there was to do.

The cook pointed to another kitchen and said that I was to go there and wash up. We were a big family at home, but I never had I seen so many dirty plates and dishes to wash. I felt quite sure she had never washed up for days, but I was wrong. That particular day they had a shooting party on, and this was the end result, but I got stuck into it and didn’t say anything. When I had nearly finished the cook came in and said " Well it’s nice to know you can at least wash up. Your mother taught you something". She then showed me how she liked her kitchen table set for her to start cooking the dinner. It was a big table and everything had to be put just as she wanted it. She instilled into me that she would expect everything to be as she wanted it, and I said I would do my best.

I was told by the other maids that she was a bit of an old battle axe and that no-one ever stayed very long, but funnily enough, she took to me and we got on like a house on fire. It was very hard work as I had to get up at half past six in the morning, come down all those stairs with the light of a candle, as there was no gas or electricity in the place. The lamps were lit by acetylene which was made outside the house and sometimes had an awful smell. I would clean out the big boiler in the kitchen which heated the water for the whole house, then the great big range would have to be cleaned and the floor. By this time it would be nearly seven thirty and then it was time to do work for the housemaid. I had front steps to scrub, and a cloakroom to clean and what they called the front hall - no electric cleaners in those days – it was hands and knees with brush and pan. And after that I could go to the kitchen and prepare breakfast for the staff. We had plenty of good food and I did feel guilty sometimes, knowing that at home they did not get what I was having. There seemed to be no shortage of anything. We had our own farm which produced all the butter, bacon, milk and eggs, and vegetables would be brought in by one of the gardeners every morning.

I began to put on weight and looked so well. I was quite happy although I had to work hard. The cook, whose name was Metcalf, always called me Patty, because she said I looked like her sister of that name! We got on famously and she taught me an awful lot about cooking - so much so that, when she was taken ill once, I had to cope with a dinner party for ten guests and it all went off without a hitch. I felt so proud when the lady of the house came in to compliment me.

I had been there sometime when I received a telegram to say that Mother and Dad were both ill, and would I come home. I was very worried but Mrs. Beston, my mistress, said that I must go and she arranged for a big hamper of food to be packed for me, and the groom was told to take me home. I found them both in bed. Father had had a heart attack and Mother had got a stomach ulcer, and both were very ill.

I found that Flossie had left home and got herself a job in a shop in Swindon, Wiltshire, in order to be near her boyfriend, who was a captain in the army. Lena had managed to get a good post for herself in a grocery store in Cambridge. Betty was still at Boots but she was now a librarian. Mother had made herself ill by worrying how to keep up such a big house, without the help from their wages and had let two rooms to a young married couple to help pay the rent.

I set to and did just what the doctor told me. I remember that he asked me how old I was and when I said I was turned seventeen, he said that I was old enough to be told that if your mother doesn’t get better soon, you will lose her. I know that all of a sudden I felt so old - I don’t know why - but my mother did get better and soon Father was looking better too and, after a few weeks, started to get up out of his bed.

It was now 1918, and that awful flu struck everyone of us in the house, except Cathie, who for some reason never caught it. It was her that had to wait on us. She was only seven, and she would bring a kettle of water upstairs, and mother had a gas fire in her bedroom with a gas ring on top, and she managed to make us all a cup of Bovril, which Cathie would bring to each of us. After ten days, we were all feeling a lot better and Father decided to get up and went downstairs to answer the front door bell. It was Flossie. She had come home. She, too, had had the flu, but was getting better when she had the news that her fiancée had been killed in France.

One by one we recovered, and came downstairs - yet tragedy struck yet again. This time it was a telegram to say that Lena had died from flu and would someone go to Cambridge. I shall never know where my mother got the strength from but she and Flossie went there to collect Lena’s belongings. It took them nine hours to get home because the troop trains and Red Cross trains with the wounded men had to go through first. I thought she was going to be ill all over again. The firm Lena had worked for kindly paid all the expenses, and mother sold Lena’s bicycle to one her friends there.

We tried to carry on as best we could. The war was coming to an end. We heard from Joe that he was alright but, as his captain was in the Intelligence Department, he had to stay in Geneva. They called it mopping up operations, but Joe stayed with him, as his valet, for nearly twelve months more.

Flossie went back to Swindon. I found a temporary job near home. I didn’t like it; I wanted to be in a big place.