Never forget the Angels

Out of that ethereal gloom flew angels - the Aycliffe Angels - whose work inside the threatened factory helped keep Britain's war effort on target.

Their story features in a Tyne Tees Television documentary about women in the war, Lest We Forget, to be screened tonight.

One and a half million women worked in weapons and munitions, making aircraft, tanks and ships as well as bombs and bullets. The Aycliffe Angels numbered 17,000, women who risked their own lives every day to help Britain win the war.

Their dedication won them fame well beyond County Durham, indeed it was the Nazi traitor Lord Haw-Haw who gave them their name in his threatening message: "The Little Angels of Aycliffe won't get away with it."

In spite of, or maybe because of, their bravery, some lost their lives; others lost their youth.

Jennie Harrison, from Shildon, tells the programme: "I saw one girl and she had no fingers on either hand and her face was pitted with black powder marks - people lost limbs, others lost part of their faces where the skin had been taken off, probably by a detonator going off."

She reveals how people outside the factory didn't comprehend the danger the women put themselves in. "I'd been working on nightshift one night and it had been so cold and I says, 'Mam, it's been so cold tonight' and she said, 'I think they could put a bit of a fire on' - and then I realised our parents didn't know how we were working."

While five million men went abroad to fight, 7.1 million women sustained the country. They ran businesses as well as voluntary organisations and half a million signed up for the auxiliary services - the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), Women's Air Force and Wrens; 100,000 formed the Women's Land Army.

Through nightly raids, women drove fire engines, ambulances, they dealt with evacuees and wounded civilians. In the first half of the war more civilians died on Britain's streets in bombing raids than the number of British soldiers killed abroad.

The Women's Voluntary Service (the forerunner of the WRVS) coped with the families of 30,000 dead and three million homeless in 1941 alone.

Marjorie Atkinson, from Sunderland, was a firewatcher - volunteers who had to scrape incendiary bombs off roofs with brooms or put them out with buckets of sand.

Marjorie got married in a bombing raid and then her husband went onto a merchant navy ship. Merchant convoys were deliberately targeted by Hitler's submarines in a bid to starve Britain into submission and 320 ships were lost in the spring of 1941. Marjorie tells the programme: "There are no backdoors on the sea. If they were bombed, that was it. If they got onto a raft, they were lucky, if they were in the water the convoy was not allowed to stop and pick them up, they had to sail on and leave them struggling in the water. That is one of the things my husband won't talk about."

Thankfully, her husband survived and next year they celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary. Looking back, she's amazed at the things they did. "You got so blas (about the bombs coming down) that I can remember coming out of the air raid shelter and standing looking up and watching them.

"You could use the sand to throw over them if they landed. It's amazing isn't it."

Peri Langdale, producer of Lest We Forget, says: "The women who served Britain during World War Two were heroes in every sense of the word but nobody told them. Only a handful of Britain's 60,000 war memorials mention a woman."

Many left Aycliffe, for example, without even a letter of thanks. It was in response to the lack of recognition given to the women and others like them that The Northern Echo launched the Aycliffe Angels campaign.

It raised the profile not only of the Angels but of the role of women during the war and led directly to a national service of remembrance at Coventry Cathedral in March attended by the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prime Minister Tony Blair. A second service followed at Durham Cathedral.

Earlier this year Forces sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn opened a national exhibition at the Imperial War Museum to the Home Front heroes, including munitions workers, land girls and Bevin Boys. The exhibition is due to continue at the museum until the end of the year and will then tour the country.

But despite the services and the exhibition, campaigners still want to see a permanent memorial to the women.

The York-based group, Memorial to the Women of World War Two, has raised £100,000 over the past two years to pay for a memorial, though it doesn't know what the final cost will be.

The Government has agreed to a lasting monument but has not confirmed where or when it will be put in position.

Mildred Veal, from York, says it's vital the memorial goes up sooner rather than later. "The women involved in the war are now aged between 73 and 85. If we don't get it soon there is not going to many of us left to stand in front of it and remember."

Mildred, 78, was an anti-aircraft gunner and was in charge of radar stations in London in early 1942 and in Plymouth during the run up to and aftermath of D-Day.

But she says the memorial will pay tribute to all women in the war, from the Idle Women who took over the canal barges and the Pit Brow Lasses who washed, checked and delivered the coal, to the fisheries women who made camouflage netting out of fishing nets and the Brownies who collected scrap for guns.

"All women were involved because their families were involved. Young wives who had children to look after while their men were at war must have been worried sick, and that was apart from wondering how to feed and clothe their families. They all deserve recognition."

Peri Langdale says the documentary will be used to push to Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport into confirming exactly when the monument will appear. "They have been rather slow in deciding the exact location. The programme will prove how strong the feeling is, how strong the commitment of those who want it and how wide the interest is."

Mildred does believe the memorial will happen but she won't rest until she sees it in place. "This has been a dream of mine. One day, wherever that memorial is, it is going to be crammed with women who want to stand in front of it and say thank you."

l Lest We Forget is on Tyne Tees tonight at 8pm and will be repeated to a wider audience on October 29.