Child on the Doorstep. Anne Bennett
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and her heart sank but she continued, ‘This goes back some time, Father, nine years in fact. You see, when my husband enlisted in 1915 we were left with little money to live on and we had a wee daughter and my mother-in-law also lived with us. One of us had to find work and that person had to be me, and so I took work in the munitions while my mother-in-law minded my child.’
The priest nodded. Many of the mothers in his parish had had to follow the same route during the Great War if their husbands were serving soldiers. It had always seemed monstrous to him that, despite the men putting their lives on the line for King and country, so little was paid to their dependants that the women also had to work in such dangerous places to be able to feed their children and themselves and pay the rent.
‘Did this wicked thing happen in the munition works?’ he asked, because he had heard that some of the people who worked in those industries were no better than they ought to be.
‘Not exactly, but in a way,’ Angela said in an effort to explain fully. She went on to say how, with such few men about, any women who wanted to were given the opportunity to learn to drive.
The priest was surprised at that. ‘And did you take that opportunity?’
‘I did,’ Angela said. ‘And I loved it too. I drove the small truck all over the city, but the firm had brought a man out of retirement to drive the big truck on longer trips. Then, one day, the older man had a heart attack and though he didn’t die, the doctor said he was too ill to continue. There was at the time a great shell shortage and at that moment they had hundreds of shells piled high on the large truck that he had been due to drive to the docks that day. The boss said as I was the best and most experienced driver, and virtually the only one who could read maps, I must go in his stead.’
‘My goodness,’ the priest said. ‘It is a great distance to the docks. Were you not nervous at all?’
‘Oh yes, Father, as nervous as a kitten and scared,’ Angela said with truth. ‘But then I told myself my husband was probably scared when he had to face the enemy but he couldn’t run away. And I knew how badly the shells were needed and with the older man out of action there was no one else to take them but me.’
‘D’you know, you have surprised me,’ the priest said. ‘I shouldn’t be, I suppose, for women are driving all sorts of vehicles these days, but I never imagined girls driving round trucks packed with explosives.’
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