To all the women who stayed in the towns and cities of Britain during the Blitz and attempted to continue their day-to-day lives, working and raising children, as the bombs rained down around them. Over an intense eight-month period of nightly bombing raids, women found their streets transformed from the Home Front to a battlefront.
The Blitz was Hitler’s attempt to bring Britain to heel. He believed it would have such a devastating effect on civilian morale that the government would be forced to negotiate peace terms. He underestimated the British character and overlooked their secret weapon – British women!
Life became a cherished gift, and living to see the dawn of a new day was far from a certainty. No one went to bed on a row or took a solitary moment of their life for granted. Or, as sparky eighty-nine-year-old Pat from St Hilda’s East Community Centre in Club Row, East London, told me she used to say when she bade her fellow factory workers goodbye at the end of a shift, ‘Goodnight, God bless, see you in the morning, PG [please God].’
Thank you, Pat, Dolly, Vera, Kathy, Sally, Vi, Emily, Nell, Peggy, Gladys, Minksy, Dot, Mags, Glad, Babs, Pat S. and Iris . . . mothers, machinists and East End Blitz survivors. God bless you all.