225606 Phoebe Morland civilian Munitions worker I know a bit about Pheobe Morland, whose husband married my husband's mother, who has sadly passed away. Pheobe worked in the (ammunition?) factory in Aycliffe and was killed in an explosion. Her husband, Harry Morland, was a sailor and was at the time was lost at sea in the far east. It took six months for him to find out that his wife had been killed. As far as I know, he came home from the war only to find his house boarded up and his children Jean and Tom living at their grandmothers.
He then moved into Wilkinsons buildings in Shildon, and my husband's mother, Mary Norton, moved in with him as housekeeper. They married 28 years latter after having two more children Paul and Gary. Mary already had three children of her own, so they then had 2 of his, 3 of hers and 2 of theirs.
However Alan my husband lost touch with Mary, his mother, and went with his father to London - who left him outside a pub with his brother and a woman with 11 children of her own took them in. He lived with her until we got married in 1960. But he always yearned to find his real mother and in 1965 he decided to try and find her. He knew she lived in Shildon and to cut a long story short he found her and we later moved to Newton Aycliffe with our 3 children. There is quite a bit more to this story, but I just thought these thing that happened to people as a consequence of war should not be left unsaid.
|