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Winifred Mary McCabe was born on 18th December 1920, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne the daughter of Terence McCabe, an Irishman serving in the Royal Field Artillery and Winifred Edith Watts. Terence, after completing his 21 years in the British Army, eventually moved to Sarsden, Oxfordshire. Her father worked as a groom on a nearby estate, Winnie went to work at Lainchburys. In 1940 Winnie met her future husband Con Murfitt, on a blind date. He was serving in the RASC and briefly based nearby, quite quickly he was sent overseas to North Africa. They corresponded throughout the war without meeting again for over five years they married in 1946 (Information supplied by Terry Murfitt son of Winnie McCabe)
The story below was written by Winnie McCabe in 2006 when she was 85 years old.
I was living in a small village called Churchill in Oxfordshire, when war broke out I think we had all been expecting it, as Neville Chamberlain, the year before, had said “Peace in our time” which no one believed. Everywhere it seemed we were preparing and as soon as war was declared, hotels everywhere were requisitioned and big houses taken over for school evacuations and Anderson shelters were put up.
The call-up started for young men of 20 and a bit later girls of 20. We girls had a choice of going in to the ATS, WAAF, Land Army or munitions work. I chose munitions. I went to work at Lainchbury’s factory at Kingham, Oxfordshire; Lainchburys were a small ‘Agricultural Engineers’ before the war, employing about 50 people. I was 19 when the war broke out, for a while nothing happened and lots of people said it would be over by Christmas, then the bombing started on all our cities, London the worst. I worked on shifts six until two, two until ten and ten until six. On night shift, we had the wireless on all night, with Vera Lynn, and when the Yanks came in, Glen Miller, we sang all night; it didn’t matter if you were out of tune as the machinery made such a noise. There was a lot of white suds and burning hot steel that peeled out from our lathes and curled around our wrists making numerous burns and scars, but we got used to it. Sometimes we would get a septic finger and were sent, in our boiler suits, to the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford to have them lanced. We ruined so many pairs of shoes, our union managed to get us clogs, which were kept at work, they were quite comfortable. They also got us some ‘snoods’ for our hair, which were nicer than scarves. We thought the ‘snoods’ were lovely, especially when you had your hair in what was called the pageboy style.
My dearest friend, who was 19 at the time was evacuated from London and lived with us, we started on war work together she is still my best friend after 65 years and we stuck together through thick and thin and right throughout the war. When we married, our husbands were good friends and we all had good holidays together, we have both been widows for many years and still see each other occasionally and phone each other every week.
Left photo shows (left to right) Vern Harding, Winnie McCabe, Eileen Tolley and Gladys ?
Right Photo Eileen Tolley and Winnie McCabe.
Photos kindly supplied by Terry Murfitt (Winnies's son)
During the war we were quite short of food, we got used to dried egg and spam (I liked spam) but not tuna. In those days with tight rationing, we all seemed to somehow keep healthy; I suppose it was to do with all of us being young and strong, there were not many over weight people about, in the war years. My mother used to cycle three miles to get in a queue for food and I remember her only coming home with a pound of tomatoes after getting her rations, she was always at the back of the queue.
We all worked hard and always turned up for work (sometimes with a hangover). We had our good times when not at work. Because of the blackout your social life had to be dancing or at the pubs. The pubs were closed during the week as they only had enough beer for the weekend and as they were all packed, beer was soon sold out.
The Picture to the right shows Winnie during 1942. (Photograph kindly supplied by Terry Murfitt)
Opposite our little factory was the village hall and if there was a late dance there, we would have a quick wash in the canteen and go across to the dance in our boiler suits, which the Yanks thought were great fun and said we were doing a great job. We met some very nice G.I.s and had dates with them. The ones that were around our area were General Patton’s 6th Army. My friend and I had the experience of going for a ride in one of General Patton’s Sherman tanks which were in the wooded area going into Chipping Norton. It was during a day when the village was having a money?raising day in the square. We had several of these all over the country, called by various names “V for Victory”, “Salute the Soldier”. While this was going on myself my friend and another friend were taken out by an American Lieutenant and two Sergeants for a short ride in a tank, which if they had been seen and reported could have got them into trouble. We thought it was very exciting sitting in the front on a bouncy seat looking through the turret.
It has always stuck in my mind and my friend’s the morning they moved out for the Second Front, it was dawn. At daylight, we heard trucks coming down the road, there was a field opposite our house, we watched from our bedroom window a jeep stopped and pulled in to an open gate a padre got out and laid an altar cloth on the bonnet of a jeep. The G.I.s got out of the trucks and kneeled down and the padre said mass for them. We heard later, from them, that they fought through the Ardennes and lost a huge amount of lives.
An incident, which I always remember is when a friend of ours, who had joined the W.R.E.N.S was stationed at Newbury, she became friendly with an American Military Police officer who was going to give her a big 21st birthday party. She invited me and my friend to Newbury for a weekend if we could get there from Oxford. The trains, in those days were chock-a-block but through stepping over people and army kit in the corridors, we finally got there. An American jeep met us at the station, two girls in a jeep flying through Newbury on a Saturday afternoon, with a driver who was only eighteen and just learning to drive, so we were told. It was quite hair-raising; we missed a gatepost by a fraction of an inch, but arrived in one piece. We went to an evening meal where there were a crowd of American servicemen and their girlfriends. When we walked into the dining room we just could not believe it, a long, long table loaded down with every food you could think of. The Americans’ certainly looked after their men food wise!
Winnie is 4th from the left in the front row in the picture above
Another incident which always stuck in my mind was earlier in the war. My friend and I used to bike to Moreton in the Marsh eight miles from home to the aerodrome which had all Australian airmen, who we went with to the dances and the pubs. The Australians were flying Wellington bombers, before the Lancasters came in. One evening we were in the pub with our boy friends and outside, we heard marching, we all rushed out and there were the arrogant Afrika Korps (Germans) marching to a prisoner of war camp, (I think it was at Bourton on the Hill). They were still dressed in their desert kit and singing at the top of their voices. One of our Aussie friends, who knew German, he said the bas....ds are singing “we march against England” so we all raised our voices and swore at them. By the end of the war, most of the prisoners were given army uniforms, dyed purple with big coloured patches on them and put to work on the land.
I still have the letter my Aussie pilot sent me when he went to the Middle East. He flew over our house when my friend and I came off a 2 o’clock shift and dipped the wings of his Wellington and waved in farewell. He did survive the war as he wrote on his way back to Australia but we were unable to meet. I still have kept his letter. I was often called ‘Mac’ by G.I.s and Australians during the war, as my name being Win McCabe, my father was a lovely Irishman who fought for the British in the first World War.
I was proud to be put on work which was very ‘hush- hush’. There were only two of us chosen to do this work. We had this huge piece of steel which had to be lifted on and off the lathe by a crane and we hadn’t a clue what we were doing until the day of the ‘Dambuster raid’ May 17th 1943, when our boss came in to tell us we had been making a part for the Dambusters bombs. I wasn’t very excited about it at the time, as we had lost such a lot of our brave young men in those Lancasters during the raid.
The end disc machined at Lainchburys
The war seemed to be going our way more after the Normandy landings. My friend and I user to go up to London for some weekends as her mother could not stand living in the countryside and returned to live in London. So on Saturday evenings we went to the West End dancing at Covent Garden to Ivy Benson’s Band and to Edmundo Ross with Rita Rosa singing. We also went to the Leicester Square cinemas to see ‘the big films’ like Gone with the Wind.
During those wartime days, when we were in London at the weekends, the servicemen of different countries adopted various pubs. One in Leicester Square was always packed by Newfoundland forces, another in Fleet Street, (which then was where the newspapers were printed), was always packed by Australian air?crew. They were lively times for all trying to forget the war for a few hours.
We were in Trafalgar Square on VJ night, which was the one when the Japs had been brought down. Our soldiers were being gathered together after VE to go out for jungle war again. After VE night we all still had to keep on with our war work. We were still turning out munitions after VE and everyone was carrying on with the war work. A recent TV programme about the celebrations on VE night were not celebrated as much as VJ night. We only had the wireless to tell us what was happening and the cinema news, which used to change twice a week. Many people did not know the war was over at our little factory we were going on night shift so we had a fire in the yard and burnt all the blackouts. Then a load of us climbed on an open lorry and rode around the villages singing and shouting. No one came out to see us, I think everybody was a bit war weary, most of all the armed forces were still in Europe and scattered all over the war zones.
The really big time was VJ when everyone realised that the war was really over and there were no regrets at the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, as it saved thousands of our soldiers from another jungle warfare.
My friend and I had a marvellous time in Trafalgar Square on VJ night; we missed the last tube home, stated to walk the seven miles to Bethnal Green, where my friend’s mother lived. An empty taxi with a Jewish driver pulled up and said “Your all going to Whitechapel Road, hop in girls” and we didn’t have to pay!
When the soldiers came home they were given great homecoming greetings. Everyone put big “Welcome Home…so and so” signs outside their homes and all the jobs they were in before the war were given back to them.
I am now 85 and getting the worse for wear.
(Mrs) Win Murfitt (nee McCabe)
Winnie's married name was Murfitt she passed away in July 2012 age 93.
Winnie's married name was Murfitt she passed away in July 2012 age 93.
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