Kathleen Roberts tenaciously fought for more recognition for the ‘women of steel’ who contributed so much to the war effort
“You can bugger off, we don’t want you here”. That was the charming welcome from workers for young women arriving for their first shifts at Sheffield’s steelworks in World War II. But these scowling old-timers, hadn’t bargained for “little but powerful” Kathleen Roberts, just 19, who was having none of their bad behaviour, and responded: “Don’t you bloody well speak to me like that again because I don’t like it.”
She told The Mirror: “It was the first time I’d ever sworn, I was furious. The man called Joe who was working on the next machine was killing himself laughing at me. He put his thumbs up and said ‘that was great Kath’.
“They were nasty with us, they didn’t want us there, they didn’t think we were any good but we soon changed their minds,” she said. “We were so good because our fingers were so nimble. Our crane driver Ruth Miller was like a monkey and could drop a load on a sixpence, she was absolutely brilliant”.
Feisty Kathleen was so proud of how she and her colleagues contributed to the war effort that 16 years ago she started a campaign to get the ‘Women of Steel’ recognised, and met then Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Along with three other women, who have all since died, their campaign raised enough money for a statue to be erected. They were determined to get the nation’s recognition after being spurned for years since their war-time graft.
Gran Kathleen, now 103, from Sheffield says: “On our last day we were given his small envelope with a five pound note inside and two pence and it said; ‘You’re no longer required’. We all felt dreadful about it. There was no thank you, no anything.”
She worked on the strip rolling mill at Brown Bayleys steelworks, in one of the more dangerous roles. She told The Mirror how they had to roll seven inch drums of steel as “thin as ribbon” during their 72-hour six-day working week. The day started at 6am after a five-mile walk from her parents’ home as there were no trams. “We never knew what we were making,” says Kathleen, “that was a secret. We just did it with no questions asked.
“It was quite dangerous when it was going through where the steel was soldered together because it could break the joint and then you had it all over the place, it could chop your head off, it was dangerous. There were no safety regulations. I saw many a finger chopped off.
“Occasionally I’d hear screams somewhere and I think, ‘oh goodness, somebody else has lost a finger because there were these huge guillotines with no safety guard in front. At first I was scared but I got used to it.
“There were a lot of nasty accidents. One time I heard this scream and there was this young man and a steel rod had gone through his hip, it was red hot, terrible. His colleagues rushed to him and chopped the rest of the steel off but he was injured very badly.
“There were a lot of awful injuries in the factories but these women kept on working because they knew how important it was.”
They did eight to 12 hour shifts and worked six days a week, and that was their life for six years. But Kathleen recalls being “more frightened of the rats” recalling; “they were massive. I used to get up on the desk frightened to death.”
Sheffield’s steelworks were a vital cog in the nation’s war effort, producing everything from crankshafts for Spitfires, to artillery shells and tank treads. The lights would go out when the German planes moved overhead.
And Kathleen recalls how whenever a shooting star was seen going over a factory, they would see it as a sign another soldier had fallen and a telegram bearing the bad news would be delivered soon afterwards. She got her telegram after D-Day, it was the second time her husband Joe, an infantry sergeant in the East Yorkshire Regiment, had been wounded.
“My dad came to my works with a telegram from the War Office. To say that Joe was wounded and in transit. He’d been shot on Gold beach in Normandy. He was carrying this injured lad when a shell went off.” It was not his only act of extreme heroism, as he’d once braved a minefield to save his injured commanding officer.
Kathleen was allowed a few hours off work to visit her husband and said: “He came to the old Royal Hospital in Sheffield, it was his voice I heard first, it was this person shouting his head off. He was shouting: ‘I’m not going back I will kill myself first’.
“He thought they were going to patch him up and send him back but he wasn’t fit to go back. He was shot out in the Middle East first by a sniper who blasted half his shoulder off. This time he was left with a few fingers working on his hand. In the hospital there was a sergeant stood by his side. He was suffering from stress after D-Day. What he had seen was terrible. He was in hospital for 15 months.”
Joe was eventually released just before VE Day and then, and as the world celebrated, Kathleen and Joe walked for miles in silence across Sheffield.
“There were fireworks and people enjoying themselves because the war was over. But as far as Joe was concerned it wasn’t over. He’d lost too many of his colleagues. He wouldn’t join in. He didn’t seem to know I was there with him walking by his side, I could just see the tears. He never spoke. He was completely lost. “
Showing us a picture of her husband, taken as he proudly stood next to his five comrades, Kathleen says: “After D-Day Joe was the only one left alive. They were all dead. “Over the years I’d often find him sitting in his chair with tears rolling down his cheeks, I used to just leave him because I knew what he was thinking about. He never forgot them.”
Author of the Women of Steel series, Michelle Rawlins, said: “The women of steel were a remarkable generation, who sacrificed so much, for little reward, to do their bit. Many of the women worked up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, in dangerous circumstances, without a second thought for their own safety.
“It took nearly 70 years for them to be officially recognised and thanked by government, an accolade they rightly deserved. Their contribution to the war effort should never be forgotten.”
