Sissy, who was itching to do something, anything, managed to get employment at a distant munitions factory. She promised to write, and two weeks after her departure, I received a letter.

My dearest sister, Gertie,

I miss you terribly! I am writing you a different letter from Ma and Pa because I don’t want them to worry.

The munitions factory is buried between sand dunes and surrounded by a trench. It is forbidden to say where in case Kaiser Bill gets our post. All of us women workers stay in a hostel which is awfully basic, a mile away from the factory. Life is hard! We’re not allowed to wear anything metal, no hooks, or metal bones in our stays, so most of us have abandoned this undergarment. Oh, the joy of being able to breathe and not have your middle pinched into pleats!

They wake us at 5 a.m. to break the ice on our water jugs. Breakfast is bread with lard and sweet tea. We walk a mile to work in our khaki uniforms, which are not too bad, and a heavy cape which we clutch around ourselves against the bitter cold. Our boots are diabolical, unladylike and uncomfortable. Thank God for Vaseline which we smear on our heels and bunion-bone to prevent more blisters. We must wrap our hair in muslin, so we look like dumplings ready for the pot.

We slave through a twelve-hour day, all windows closed, and the silence is peculiarly sinister as we pack these instruments of death and torture. I fill sixty-pound shells with TNT which are ammunition for some great cannons that are bound to bring victory for our brave soldiers.

I often think of Arthur and hope a German woman is not packing shrapnel into a shell that might harm him. Although I’m determined to serve my country, I hate to think of the distress brought to some mother in our enemy’s country by the bombs I help to put together.

A woman died from TNT poisoning last week, Gertie. The girls in one section turn yellow from the explosives – even the whites of their eyes – and twenty workers were killed on Thursday in an explosion. We were hurried into the surrounding trenches for fear of a massive detonation but the trenches were not wide enough so we had to squeeze in. Then we realised, the mud walls teemed with slugs! Cripes! How I wished we wore trousers.

Yesterday a government photographer came around – we were all afraid his flash would blow us to Kingdom come. He was terrifically good-looking, so you can imagine the smiles from two thousand women blinding the poor chap. The gossip is, Lloyd George himself sent the photographer, though we’re not sure if it’s for the Pathé News or the broadsheets. I’ll let you know when I hear.