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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Ciara Garland on behalf of Brian Cooper and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Cooper fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

Brian Cooper鈥檚 War Recollections鈥�

I was seven years old when war was declared. I remember coming home from school and my mother saying that we were all to sit around the wireless in the early evening. The Prime Minister came on and said that certain demands of the German Government had been made but were not forthcoming and so a state of war against Germany had been declared.
As a very young lad at the time, that didn鈥檛 mean an awful lot and the enormity of those words and indeed the whole situation didn鈥檛 sink in for a good few months.
Then something happened that did make it all seem more real to me. All my friends鈥� fathers and older brothers started disappearing into the forces and I realised then that things were going to get serious.
Obviously, there were people who were exempt from 鈥榗all-up鈥� and, fortunately for us, my father was one of them. He worked at the Royal Ordinance factory in Nottingham where the tanks, guns, etc, used by our forces, were produced.

I remember the police and the council officers issuing us with sticky tape to put over our windows in a criss-cross pattern to stop the glass shattering if bombs were dropped. They also gave us blackout curtains to draw over in the evenings to prevent the enemy from spotting the lights from the towns and cities. If even the merest chink of light was emanating from one of your windows and an ARP (air raid) warden spotted it he would come round and yell at you to 鈥淧ut that light out!鈥� amidst other comments!
I remember being given a gas mask to try on first thing at school - it was horribly claustrophobic and smelt so awful I felt quite sick!

As things got more serious everyone began digging air raid shelters (Andersons) in their back gardens and covering them with sandbags and soil.

A vivid memory is of Winston Churchill coming on the radio and announcing that, following failure at Dunkirk, the War in Europe had been lost and the Battle of Britain was just beginning.
Almost overnight, signposts and railway station names up and down the country were removed, so that if the Germans did invade us they wouldn鈥檛 know whereabouts in Britain they were!
During the Battle of Britain, Spitfires and Hurricane bombers were sent off to Germany on missions to cut that country鈥檚 means of producing armaments and cripple their forces. Barrage balloons (floating and stationary) were a clever invention used to deter the enemy.
When I was 10 years old the air raid sirens went off and everyone rushed to the shelter at the end of the school playing field. The teacher kept the door ajar for light and air and I heard a heard great commotion in the sky and looked up to see a messchersmidt and spitfire locked in a battle for the skies. This to me as a small boy was, of course, terribly exciting! I watched them battle on until they flew out of sight. I don鈥檛 know what happened to them after that.

At the time Germany was bombing Britain we lived close to an airfield in Hucknall near Nottingham. There was an air raid one night when the enemy tried to bomb the airfield but fortunately (or by a sheer miracle) all the bombs hit the surrounding fields and woods.
We youngsters played in the craters left by the bombs, something I don鈥檛 imagine they would let you do nowadays!

At this time, food was also beginning to become short (though thanks to a resourceful mother, I never went without) and so rationing was introduced as well as clothing coupons. Petrol was almost non-existent and so everyone was really now starting to find life quite hard going. In those days of course the radio, papers and newsreels whilst being informative, all took on a somewhat 鈥榦ver positive鈥� slant.

A rather sad memory I hold from the war is returning from school one day to find a naval officer in my house. He was one of the few survivors of the HMS Hood after it was torpedoed. My father鈥檚 brother had been serving there with him and sadly had died in the attack. This officer had wanted to come personally to tell us about my uncle, which, even as a young boy, I admired him for doing so.

A particularly worrying time for us during the war was when we received a telegram
saying that another uncle of mine, this one serving in the army, was missing, presumed killed. For several months we thought the worst until we discovered he was alive and being held in a German Prisoner of War camp in a place called Stalagluft3

At the end of the war in May 1945, street parties were held across the land and our street was no exception! I had never seen such a wonderful celebration and won鈥檛 ever forget it!

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