This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from Northumberland on behalf of Mrs. Emma Bell (nee Molyneux). Mrs. Bell fully understands the site’s terms and conditions, and the story has been added to the site with her permission. When she was seventeen or eighteen years old, Emma Molyneux, as she then was, started work as a machinist in a factory making uniforms for the Army and Air Force. The factory was located at Pelaw Co-operative Building in County Durham. Emma’s job was to make trousers to the stage of them being ready to press. Before passing them on, she often put a message into one of the pockets, which read: “If married, pass me by, If single, please reply”
During the course of the war Emma received three replies although, now, she can only remember the name of one of the men who took the trouble to do so. She never met any of them but, for a while, she exchanged letters with Richard Greenhow, a Glaswegian, whose photograph she kept on her bedside table.Another who wrote served with the RAF and came from Blackpool. He thought Emma was lovely because she shared his Mother’s Christian name. The third respondent she cannot now recall but she thinks that, probably, he served with the Army.
This recollection always brings a smile to Emma’s face.