In The Munitions

In The Munitions – Women at War in Hereford

Edited by Bill Laws, additional research Bobbie Blackwell

Nearly 6,000 people worked making shells, bombs, landmines and torpedoes at Hereford’s munitions factory. It was dirty, dangerous work. At least twenty nine died a violent death at what was one of Britain’s oldest, and largest, explosives filling plants.

Compiled from interviews with former workers, and presented as told, In The Munitions – Women At War In Hereford is a diary of those days. "It was all hush-hush.

There was a railway to take the bombs away but where they went to we didn't know." "I got as far as the road and this bomb went off. Something struck my leg and I couldn't move. I thought: 'This is my lot.'" "I went in with him and he was in tears. I picked up a corrugated sheet on the roadside and there was a girl's head under there." “What a terrible thing – working our lives out to blow other people to pieces.”

Memorials were later erected at Rotherwas in recognition of their services.

This was a Local Heritage Initiative Project, a partnership between the Heritage Lottery Fund, Nationwide Building Society and the Countryside Agency.