FOR WOMEN GIRL'S PLUCK

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 80, 5 April 1943, Page 5

FOR WOMEN GIRL'S PLUCK

ENGLISH WAR WIDOW BECAME U.S. SHIPBUILDER SAN FRANCISCO. California is singing the praises of an English girl who circled the globe in her war travels and eventually arrived in San Francisco, and, anxious to do her bit, became a defence worker at one of the Henry Kaiser shipyards at Richmond. A slim, peach-complexioned blonde, she was followed by wars and bombing from London to Hongkong, to Manila, to Pearl Harbour, to California, and eventually to a job at Richmond at a ship-fitter. Mrs. Jillian Tyrrell-Feltham comes from Surrey, and after the outbreak of war her husband, a pilot in the R.A.F., was killed in action. She took her son, Peter, now 10, with her to Hongkong. From there they were evacuated with Qther civilian residents, first to Manila, then to Pearl Harbour. A fortnight before December 7 she decided to move again— this time to the United States. She left on a boat not many days before the attack.

Mrs. Tyrrell-Feltham first joined friends in Beverly Hills, Southern California, and before long had a secretarial, position, but the war started getting her down. She began brooding and decided to do something about it. Her antidote was more work, and she started attending night school, where she learned the ship-fitting business. Thus her eventual migration to Richmond Shipyard No. 3, where she started work as the first woman weld-checker at the great shipyard. "It Is Dirty" "I had always been active in sports—swimming and .golf—and I think that helped a lot. When I started working at the shipyards there was a fortnight's 'breaking-in' period that I did not know whether I could manage. My back was stiff and my muscles ached. But soon I got conditioned. Now it does not bother me. I usually go out in the evenings, and I have a great deal of energy, more than I ever had before." About the dirt at the shipyard: "Well, it is dirty," she admitted. "But safety regulations require us to wear heavy gloves. You can pick up a piece of very hot steel, and it does not make any difference. The gloves keep hands from getting marred or hard. My face gets dirty, but soap and water take care of that. And the bandanna keeps the smoke out of my hair. Work in the shipyards requires, above all things, wealth of energy and a large quantity of humour."