The History of Ruddington Depot
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Wartime Operations
Staffing the filling factory
Before production began in June 1942 , a very large staff had been recruited and trained; most of them were directed labour. Women over the age of eighteen had to register and undertake some form of war work. The great majority of filling factory workforce were women.
Margaret Stapleford [née Blood] would have preferred other options:
“I was 19 and I had to do some form of war work, or go into the Forces. I wanted to join the Forces, but my mother said, “No, no, no. You’ll get killed!” I decided to go to work on a farm in the village, and joined the Land Army, but I couldn’t bear the cows. I was really no good at farming. My mother said, Go on the MOD site.' I thought, `That’s the only place in the village I could go and do war work`. I didn’t realise it was dangerous.
When you first went there you worked in a shop in what was called `dirty side`. This was where the bomb cases came in, and you cleaned them. After a little while you were put onto what was called `clean side`, where the bombs were filled. I was sent into the filling shop.”
A
group of Aeronautical Inspection Department (A.I.D.) Inspectors. Lilian Slack
is the third from the left on the back row.Lilian Slack [nee Elliott]
became an Aeronautical Inspection Department (A.I.D.) Inspector of Bomb Filling:
“I didn’t apply for the job. I was made redundant, and I was pushed into the A.I.D. We did two or three weeks in the classroom, in the administration block, to learn all about explosives. Then we went onto the site itself to learn every aspect of bomb filling, from when the empty casings came in to when the bombs went out full. We had to cover every aspect of it, because there had to be an A.I.D. Inspector there at every stage of filling. The supervision of everything rested with us. If things were not done right we had to tell the people concerned”.
This was not an easy task for a newly trained young woman who was only twenty years old, especially if the defaulter was an older man with much more experience.
All newly appointed employees signed the Official Secrets Act and were given a rule book with more than 150 rules in it. One rule prohibited them from living on licensed premises. Pubs were thought to be places where unguarded conversation took place and secret information could be passed on unwittingly.
The Story > Chapter 3 > Section 3.03