What Margaret Wright from Grantown remembers is the absence of men

How did the war affect you and your family?

Well, you're split up for a start. My dad, he went in the Army in 1939. He was in the TAs, so he just went and joined the regular Army because he would-a gone anyway. And uncles, everybody that was sort of close to you that you knew, they went. All these people, they just went. I can't remember my father. I've no memories of my father before the age of seven. I can't remember anything, seeing him at all. So it affected you in that way. But, in the same way, you never knew you had a father, you know, because he was never there. So you just, your mother was there, and my great-grandma used to live with us, and I had a sister younger than me, so that was it. All women. All females. All together. There was no males at all. Even the man next door, he'd gone to the war as well. So it was a strange sort of thing, but you never really thought about it when you was a kid. And I can't even remember even worrying, wondering what me dad was, what, a father, I can't even think of thinking, 'Well, they haven't got fathers,' you know, so there wasn't such a thing. You see what I mean? They just weren't part of your life, so you didn't really know, and I couldn't have told anybody what he looked like. I just couldn't've done. If they'd have said, 'What did your father look like?', I just couldn't've described him. I know, I think I saw me Uncle George - that was me mum's brother - I think I saw him once during the war, maybe not even that. I never saw him in a uniform or anything, so I maybe didn't. But I knew they existed, but can't even picture him, can't even remember even seeing him. I had a grandad, so there was one man in me life, and that was about the only one. I just had one grandad and that was it. Everything else was women. All women.