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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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School days by Natalie Lyon

by Kesteven and Sleaford High School

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Archive List > Childhood and Evacuation

Contributed by听
Kesteven and Sleaford High School
People in story:听
Ena Lyon
Location of story:听
Lincolnshire
Background to story:听
Civilian
Article ID:听
A4507102
Contributed on:听
21 July 2005

'I was at school when the war was going on aged about 5. I remeber my parents building an air-raid sheleter. We all had gas masks and we had to carry them everywhere we went. We carried them in a brown cardboardbox with our names on them. I used to find it difficult to put on and they were quite uncomfortable. Many of my friends fathers went off to war so they were left at home with their mothers. My mother worked in the hospitals, i remember this because i always wanted to work in the hospitals when i grew up like my mother used to. Life at school didn't really change much but all the teachers seemed to keep us occupied by reading us stories and teaching us songs.
The first air-raid we had was horrible. Because we hadn't had one before i was confused and didn't know what to do, but my mother led me down into the air-raid shelter with my brother and sister.
Sometimes the air-raids were just a drill which meant that nothing got bombed.
My worst memory was probably the one where i was walking back from school with my sister when the air-raid alarm wnet off. Because we were a couple of streets away from our home we paniced. We started to run home, however my sister dragged me into her friends shelter until the raid was over. My mother was hysterical as we hadn't arrived home and was really worried. I remember thinking what if my house as been bombed as we could here bombs going off not far from where we lived.
Another time i was really scared was when a house two doors away from use got bombed. It was the middle of the night and i heard planes going over, i ran into my parents room and my family went down stairs and out into the garden, and into the shelter. I was so frightened because we thought we heard a plane right over us then we heard a big crash and a bang that was almost deafening. My father went outside to see what had happened, about 5 minutes later he came in and told us the bomb had just missed us and had hit the house two away from us. I didn't know the family personally and they were quite old but my parents did. Many of the familys surrounding the house tried to clear up the rubble and mess the bomb had made. I think that was when the war really properly had an effect on me because i couldn't help thinking that could have been me.
In the next couple of days months there weren't many air-raids but we were all still very caustious. My mother often had to work a longer shift as so many injured people kept coming into the hospital.
When planes went over we always wondered whether they were german planes or english planes. Sometime the air-raids would go on for most of the night and sometimes after a really bad raid we used to sleep in the shelter incase the germans flew over at night.
Some bits of the war really scared me, but others were really fun, like when the teachers told us we didn't have to do work and when me and my friends went out looking for shrapnel. I was very lucky as my house never got bombed and none of my family got sent to war and none of them died, but i do feel most sorry for the familys who were effected.

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