´óÏó´«Ã½

During the war we lived in a court off Bozenew Street, not too far away from the Docks.
When war broke out I was too young to understand anything. It was when the air-raids started, the Docks were the main target.
The noise was terrible on those nights. On our way to the shelter we saw lights sweeping the skies.
Barrage balloons were placed around the area, the one I remember was behind the post office on Scotland Road.
On the nights of the raids, my sister Lillie’s job was to wrap me in a knitted blanket and get me to the shelter as fast as she could. My brother and other sister had to carry bedding, hot drinks and something to eat.
We had to get across a street to get to the shelter in Bowe Street, later they built one in the court.
If the raid was heavy, we only had time to come down our steps, and down the cellar steps of the shop on the corner of the place. One occasion, my sister stepped off the coal hole cover, as a piece of shrapnel hit it. She suffered hair less after this. Later she had sun-ray treatment on her head, while I had mine on my chest (asthma), her hair grew back.
The most frightening night was when a man was brought into the cellar from the pub on the corner, with shards of glass sticking out of his face, blood running down his face.
My brother Billie had my two sisters collecting shrapnel each morning.
I can still remember the smell of the shelter, and how glad we were to get out of there into the air, it was too smoky and smelt like burning rubbish.
During one of these raids the row of shops were bombed, and all went up as there was a chip shop on the block.
We had to move into the mission on Christian Street, my mother was the caretaker, due to an unexploded bomb. We spent six weeks there.
My father was ill with stomach cancer but never left his bed any night until we had to move out. He died March 1945, he was only 44 as he was born in October.
Later at school I remember getting big red apples, and we had to take a jam jar for drinking chocolate, we had only had dark cocoa up till then.
I remember waiting in long queues with my mother when shopping and huddles of women swapping some of their rations with each other.
We played on the debris of bombed houses, using bricks to make a ‘shop’ wrapping stones in sweet papers, broken crockery for our friends to ‘buy’.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.