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I was living in Huddersfield, and I remember the bombers coming over. We had blackout curtains and you really got into trouble if there was as much as a chink of light. I remember the cars and lorries going past, and they had very weak lights, because their lights had shutters on them.

I think you learned to save in the War — even today if I have butter, I spread it on and then scrape it off again. It’s not that we’re short, it’s just coming from the rationing.

I remember we once went on holiday to Scarborough, and the whole of the coastline is sands, as they are now, you couldn’t go down onto the sands because there were landmines on them all. I did see a dogfight with planes, I just remember that. There are quite tall cliffs at Scarborough and we were looking right out to sea. A plane landed in the sea, shot down, but as a boy you didn’t think so much about the person that died. There’s a big park in Scarborough, and we went for a sail in the park, because they had open Canadian canoes. I remember this plane came screaming over the whole park, so low you could literally see the men in it, and two or three of the canoes turned right over — it was complete shock!

Collected by SBC Museums

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