Free Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson Page A

munitions worker (and blow meself up) or be an aircraft worker. Now that had appeal, that would surely suit my seven stone frame. Reluctantly I gave my notice in to Bert.
    And so in 1941 Doris found herself, along with a host of women of all ages, kitted out in a denim boiler suit, hair neatly turbaned, ‘ready to win the war’. As Fitter 111, Grade 3, her job was as ‘mate’ to a man who was a Fitter Grade 1. The Wolverton Works was geared up to repair and maintain damaged aircraft. Doris was trained on the job by her mate, handing him five-eighth drills, fetching castle nuts and split pins, collecting blueprints. She soon graduated to the greater skill of drilling out ‘skins’ of aluminium used to patch the wings of shelled Typhoons, filing down the irregularities and holding rivets in place while her mate gunned them into the metal, sending a searing sensation into her fingers. Sometimes, if the rivets needing to be held in place were particularly large, her mate would do this job, while allowing her to do the gunning. The work required great skill and delicacy of touch. Doris’s conscientious approach won her the confidence of her mate, and sometimes he would even send her to cut aluminium – ‘not many were allowed to do this dangerous job.’ When completed, each repaired aircraft went before an inspector, who examined it in detail while Fitter 111 and her mate stood by, anxious that their work had made the grade. The inspectors were gentlemen, and Doris held them in respect.
    But, despite the large numbers of women now employed at the Wolverton Works (40 per cent of aircraft employees were women), it remained an uncompromisingly male environment – a place where‘bugger’ and ‘ ’ell’ punctuated every sentence, where burping and farting were tolerated, where grown men behaved like ten-year-olds. There was the anti-social man who ate raw onions for lunch, the joker who jammed the drawer containing the girls’ belongings by driving a nail through the runner and the idiot who booby-trapped the shelf where Doris kept her handbag: when she reached up for it she was showered with nuts and bolts. The girls got their share of taunts, caterwauls and wolf-whistles.
    Nevertheless, Doris became fascinated by her work. It was absorbing, responsible and dangerous at times. She took pride in the finished product and, above all, she knew it was important.
    Cheap Wine, Pink Gin
    In her time off Doris enjoyed the weekly dances at the Science and Arts Institute in Wolverton. At these, she often noticed a group of girls accompanied by officers gathered round a table in the corner: ‘[They] looked immaculate and very stand-offish. Their nails were like an advert for Cutex … they did not mix much.’ Who were they? The centre of code-breaking operations at Bletchley Park just six miles away was shrouded in secrecy. Doris and her factory friends speculated about what ‘ they ’ did ‘over there at the Park’, but never found out. ‘It was very hush-hush. They kept to the Secrets Act as they were supposed to, for as the posters said – “Careless talk costs lives” and “Walls have ears”.’ Locally, the Bletchley girls were recognised as being a race apart, distinctive for their air of elegance and education. Doris was in awe of their desk skills and evident intelligence. ‘We could see that they came from good backgrounds, while we were what was termed “born on the wrong doorstep” … They were billeted in the better houses in Wolverton, some of these lucky enough to have a bathroom, which was a rare feature in these times.’
    Twenty-one-year-old Mavis Lever was one of them; she had arrived at Bletchley Park in 1940. Mavis had discovered a passion for Germany’s language and literature while still at school in the 1930s and was deep into her studies on German Romanticism at University College London when war broke out. The college then evacuated to Aberystwyth. At this point, despite her passion for