Anon

We had the Americans at Kirby Mallory, they went by my house. They had big cars and big cigars. We had the Marines here (Earl Shilton) and they were terrible. They broke nearly everybody's wall down or the door in, but they did leave mine be - I escaped. Well, they just got drunk and went mad, they reckoned they'd been at sea for so long. I think there were two married the girls from here. I didn't like the Americans 'cos they'd got this, that and the other. I know one girl, she were a nice looking girl, she got in with this American, courted him, we all accepted her as going with him and then she got pregnant, you know, she'd got her engagement ring on her finger. He didn't marry her did he, 'cos he was already married with two children.

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Margery Milton

I remember one or two girls who went with them and one or two who married them. If there were ones who didn't they used to call the ones that did...all back-biting and that sort of thing, 'Oh so and so's got a Yank,' you know, that type of thing.

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Marie Phipps

We seen enough of them (Americans) coming up the yard - there were two women up the yard and their husbands were both aboard. They were keeping them company at night. There were more talk going on than a little but there was a lot of it being done. I said as long as they don't knock on my door - they'll have an answer if they do, I'll have a bucket of water all over them.

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Ron & Margery Milton

I stayed in at the factory for quite a while because there was only myself and my mother...and so I was allowed to stay at home - well I was working - but stay in the factory. Then towards the end they said I'd got to go into munitions so I just went up into John Street which was in the town. I did a very mediocre job cutting mica which is a silvery kind of thing. You cut it into slices and it was used in the make-up of aeroplane engines but we didn't know what it was at first, we just knew we were doing it. One day we were allowed to see where it was put...part of the engine. It was very boring. There were all girls in that particular room where I worked and when they were all talking one against the other, which was natural, it was a terrific noise but as soon as the door opened and the boss walked in, or the manager, there was dead silence, just like that, cut off.

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Ron & Margery Milton

In the Coventry Road behind the station...two land mines, that's when I was on duty actually. They didn't explode and they lay there until they came to diffuse them and take them away. That was the time when the bomb fell in Merivale Avenue as well...I know there were two sisters in one bed and one of them was killed and the other wasn't touched.

Your main duties (the ARP), when there was an air-raid warning, you'd have to parade round the streets to see that every light was blacked out, that was very strict them days. Your windows would have sticky tape across them, criss-cross to protect against the blast.