Joan Jones from Llanafan, Ceredigion:

"When I arrived home unemployed, my father Fred Quincy announced that Marley Tile Company in Poole, where he was now employed as a Storeman, was looking for women employees. However, because of my youth it was doubtful if I would be taken on, even though my father would be able to "keep an eye" on me.

However, I was successful and every morning, rain or shine, I was at work at 7:30am. I made the four mile journey wearing bib and brace overalls made by myself from blackout curtains and a scarf on my head made from a large yellow duster dyed with blue dye making it a brilliant green.

The Marley Tile factory was a long building with a corrugated roof and asbestos walls. No one at the factory knew what they were making until the secret was revealed on D-Day.

The concrete was dredged from a deep lake. The men worked at the top end of the factory mixing concrete, which was poured into huge moulds approximately one foot high and at least twelve foot long. At the other end of the factory about twenty five women stood all day on wet concrete floors, in cheap wooden sole shoes, making the wire reinforcements which went into the long wooden moulds.

We stood at metal stands fixing thin wire onto stronger wire crossways, for the whole length of the mould using a Pincher type tool, called a Nipper. The take home pay for a woman was £2.30 per week, not much for standing from 8:00am until 5:30pm with thirty minutes lunch, plus two fifteen minute tea breaks.

Occasionally I was asked to help Grace Polard the welder. Grace had her own room with a large table where she welded wire, there was little protection in those days, just goggles and asbestos gloves, my job was to hold the wire still.

After the men in the factory poured the concrete into the moulds, it was allowed to go off (set) and then taken away on large lorries to a secret location, now known to be Southampton.

This hard work went on until 1944 when the Mulberry Harbour was put together. In spite of the heavy work and long hours I remember singing to music on the radio all day long and listening to Worker's Playtime.

Sometimes in the afternoon around 4:00 pm, with my workmates, we would rush out to cheer huge planes leaving the RAF at Tarant Rushdown near Blandford and Bradbury Rings. The planes were flying low as they went off to bomb Hamburg and other German cities.

After 1944 the factory went back to making Marley Tiles, I did stay on for about three months but found lifting the crates of tiles in and out of the colour dip very difficult and on getting a crushed toe I decided to get the necessary doctor's certificate and leave. At just eighteen years and three months, I was out of work again."