Mildred's war time story is one of sadness (From Wharfedale Observer)

Mildred's war time story is one of sadness

4:42pm Thursday 18th October 2007

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IT was the day that changed Mildred Butterworth's life. September 3, 1939. A significant date - for two reasons.

It was the day that Mildred listened in chapel as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that Britain and France had declared war on Germany.

It was also the day she met the man who would make her a wife and, ultimately, a war widow.

Today, she's a sprightly 86 year-old with a lively sense of humour, living in a quiet cul-de-sac in Horsforth.

Sixtyseven years ago, she was 18 year-old Mildred Hartley, who lived with her parents and older brother in Todmorden and worked as a machinist, making army uniforms in Hebden Bridge.

Her recollection of the day war broke out remains clear.

"A wireless had been set up in chapel and we sat in silence in the pews and listened to what Mr Chamberlain had to say. Afterwards, the minister said a few prayers and then suggested we go home," she said.

"I remember walking home on that Sunday morning and seeing two old women leaning over their garden walls. I recall the shock of seeing both of them crying and not understanding what it was that had made them so upset.

"I think, in hindsight, that they must have lost people during the First World War which had only ended 21 years before and I guess they were crying over what was in store for us."

That evening, thoughts of the war were put to one side. On a walk with two friends she bumped into Jack Greenwood. Later he asked her out to the pictures and soon after they were an item.

By 1941, Britain stood alone against the Nazis. The Americans had yet to be drawn into the war, mainland Europe had been overrun and the whole nation was involved in the war effort.

At the age of 20, Mildred was required to register for war work. She considered the Wrens (who worked within the Royal Navy) or their RAF and Army equivalents, the WAAFs or the ATS.

Ultimately, she opted for the Land Army. "I liked the uniform," she jokes, "and I also wanted to work outside, rather than in a factory packing parachutes or somewhere like the Avro plant at Yeadon where they would have had me making munitions," she said.

"The Land Army existed to maximise food production. The priority was things like potatoes, vegetables, sugar beet and grain."

Mildred was sent to Sleaford in Lincolnshire where she joined 40 girls stationed in three wooden huts.

"A group of girls would be allocated to a farm. We seemed to spend all our time either putting something in the ground or pulling something out of it. It was hard work.

"Some of the farmers' wives didn't like having the girls around. I'm not sure what they thought we were going to do. After a day in the field, you had nothing on your mind other than having some dinner and going to sleep," she said.

The girls slept in bunks in a dormitory. "The girl above me used to snore. A prod with a knitting needle usually did the trick! We all got on famously. After all, we were all in the same boat," she said.

The pay was 14 shillings a week (or 70p in today's money) and a week's holiday a year.

Mildred married Jack in January 1943. He'd joined the RAF in 1940, first as ground crew and then air crew.

By 1943 he was training on Lancaster Bombers as a Flight Engineer - the man who sat alongside the pilot and helped him fly the aircraft.

"When I look back, I guess I didn't know Jack as well as I would have liked. We saw so little of each other because of the war. It would be a couple of days here and there when we were on leave. But there was very much a feeling about at the time that you should live for the moment.

"Jack never spoke to me about the dangers of being on Lancasters, though he did once tell an aunt that it was a job for single, rather than married men," she said.

"We married at a chapel between Todmorden and Hebden Bridge. It wasn't a fancy wedding. There were lots of people there for the ceremony but there was no reception or honeymoon. After the service we went back to my mother and father's and had a ham tea and a tin of peaches."

After three days, Jack's leave was over and Mildred returned to the Land Army but as a married woman she was allowed to take a job closer to home and by March, she was working at a poultry farm in Todmorden.

By April, Jack was flying on bombing missions from his base at Bottesford near Grantham.

"He'd have the occasional 48 hour pass and, at one point, he had a week off. He didn't say much about where he was flying but I knew it was over Germany," she said.

Then, one day in July 1943, Mildred was at the farm, when her father appeared with a telegram. Jack and the rest of his crew had been killed.

"Jack had always said that air crew lived together, worked together, played together and died together," she said.

It was years before she learned the full horror of what had happened. But it seems that, on their 14th sortie, they had suffered damage whilst on a bombing raid over Milan. They had had problems with the landing gear and, as they came into land at Bottesford, the tail had fallen off and the aircraft had plunged into a nearby field and exploded in a ball of flame.

"The information on the telegram was very sparse. I had the option of having his remains buried at Bottesford or brought home. I asked for the latter," she said.

Mildred and her father waited at Todmorden station for the 7.20 service to arrive.

"A week before, he had been home on leave and he had left from the same station, waving at me from the carriage as the train departed. When he came back to me, he was in a coffin, draped with a Union Jack.

"He was accompanied by a young RAF Corporal. His job was to take the flag back to base once the funeral had taken place," she said.

"Jack's mother had wanted to open the coffin to see her son but we weren't allowed. I was told later that there were so few remains that sandbags had been placed in the coffin to make it an appropriate weight."

The funeral took place the following day, the Corporal took his Union Jack and Mildred was a war widow at the age of 24.

Dark days followed. She continued to busy herself seven days a week at the poultry farm but a sense of bitterness prevailed.

"It was a very lonely time and it was worse when the other lads came back after the war and mine didn't," she said.

In time, however, the bitterness began to recede and, in 1948, she met Ronnie Butterworth through the Chapel's amateur dramatic society.

They married in 1949 and had a daughter Kathleen. The family moved to Horsforth in the 1960s. Ronnie worked for the local firm Garner and Bennett, Mildred at a shop attached to the New Road Side Post Office.

Ronnie died in 1995 at the age of 74. It had been a happy union that had lasted 46 years.

Mildred however still thinks most days about the husband she lost after barely six months of marriage - and what might have been.

"The war changed everything. No one emerged from that conflict without having been changed. In that way, I was no different to anyone else," she said.

l When The Lights Go On Again' will be staged at Guiseley Theatre between November 5 and 10, including a Saturday matinee. Tickets priced £7.50 - £10 are available on 08453 705045. Collections will also take place during the show's run for the British Legion's Poppy Appeal.

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