The Bomb Girls Read Free

shit!’
    After they’d signed on at the Labour Exchange Emily and Alice returned to Emily’s house with a copy of the local newspaper that they’d picked up from the paper shop.
    ‘They’re opening up the old Phoenix Mill as a munitions factory,’ Emily told her mum as she poured the girls a cup of tea.
    ‘That owd place on’t moors,’ mused Mrs Yates. ‘It’s been closed for years.’
    ‘It’ll soon be open by the looks of things,’ Alice said as she gratefully took the offered tea. ‘They’re moving munitions factories out of the cities, away from the bombing, and locating them in secret locations like sleepy old Pendle.’
    ‘It says here,’ said Emily, tapping the newspaper, ‘that the government’s sending girls from the London arsenal up here next month.’
    ‘London girls, fancy!’ exclaimed Mrs Yates.
    Emily’s wide blue eyes peered over the top of the paper.
    ‘Can you believe it? There’ll be living accommodation right next to the factory.’
    ‘They’ll never get hostels built that fast,’ scoffed Mrs Yates.
    Emily threw down the paper and accepted her tea.
    ‘The Phoenix will open on time, Mam, no danger,’ she said. ‘The lads working the Howitzer guns on the front line are running out of ammo. Mr Churchill urgently needs shells and bombs and he doesn’t care who makes ’em!’
    ‘If you’re right, I reckon you local lasses will be first at the Phoenix,’ said Mrs Yates.
    Emily and Alice looked at each other and grimaced.
    ‘First on the bomb line,’ said Alice with a little shiver. ‘That’s scary!’

CHAPTER
3
Elsie
    A hundred and fifty miles away in Gateshead, Elsie Hogan sat riveted beside the wireless set in the cramped back kitchen where she’d just served up mashed potatoes and fried meatless sausages to her whingeing stepsisters.
    ‘YUK!’ squawked the ungrateful girls as they stabbed at the grey sausages that had more bounce than a tennis ball.
    ‘Is this the best you can do?’ Elsie’s stepmother asked. When she got no reply she raised her voice. ‘Turn off that damn radio, girl, and listen to what I’m saying.’
    Elsie jumped in fright and quickly turned off the radio.
    ‘Sorry, Mam,’ she stammered humbly.
    ‘She’s our mam not yours,’ sneered Ivy, the elder of the two girls.
    Elsie corrected herself.
    ‘Sorry, Mrs Hogan, I tried mi best. It’s the rationing allowance, like.’
    ‘You’d best try harder next time,’ her stepmother grumbled. ‘Your dad would have them so-called sausages on the wall if you served them up to him.’
    Aye … and he’d have me in a stranglehold halfway up the wall alongside them, Elsie thought knowingly.
    Nobody knew her dad’s temper better than her. He never laid a hand on his new wife or her peevish girls; her stepmother would have killed him if he so much as even
thought of it. But Mr Hogan spared his only daughter nothing. If anything went wrong, from a bad day at work to bad news on the radio, she’d get a belt or kick to ease his filthy mood. He’d been bad enough when her own mam was alive but once she’d died and he’d remarried there was no hope for Elsie, who the entire household treated as their unpaid servant. Elsie longed to get away but where could she go? She had no other living relations, no money, and she was hardly allowed out apart from going to the shops to pick up their meagre war rations. Her life was a round of endless misery and fear, but the radio news she’d just heard inspired her with a rush of hope. Grabbing her shopping basket and a coat, she headed for the back door.
    ‘I’m just popping out to the shops before they close,’ she called behind her.
    ‘What about the washing-up?’ her stepmother yelled after her.
    ‘I’ll only be half an hour or so,’ came Elsie’s breathless reply as she closed the door behind her.
    Down at the local Labour Exchange, gripping her basket handle tightly, Elsie stared intently at the lady behind the desk, who felt sorry for the slip