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Our family returned home in less than a year - after the invasion scare was over; also as my father, being in the Police, could not leave home. My aunty Anne stayed throughout the War and helped out on the farm, even driving the tractor and making herself useful on the farm. We were some of the first children to go home and there were no schools open. At first we were taught by a couple of young Sunday school teachers at Westleigh Church and then two classes were opened in December 1940 at North Street School. All children from 5 years to 12 years were divided in two, my sister, nearly two years younger than me, was in my class. I also remember at some point, school being held in the back room of our house for a while and the teacher came to our house (a Miss Cobley, I think). My sister and I were there but cannot remember the other names of the eight or so children, but reading the booklet on the history of North Street School by Miss Barbara Willshaw in 1990, I am not sure if the classes held at our house were held before or after the evacuations. My education suffered at this period in my life.

As my father had been a Shipwright he decided to build an air raid shelter in the back garden, and a very good job he made of it, but he had not sealed it sufficiently and it filled with water, so we ended up with an John Anderson Shelter, which we slept in many a night during air raids. My father was not to be beaten and boxed-in under our staircase, with 1鈥� thick planks, which was all very cosy but looking back we were boxed in with the gas meter and electric mains boxes; but we did have a good supply of bottles of sterilised milk.

During the War my Mother was ill and we stayed with her friend Mrs Taylor, who had three children. They had an indoor Morrison air raid shelter; size 6' 6" (2m) long x 4鈥� (1.2m) wide and 2鈥�6" (0.75m) high. During the war there were buckets of sand and stirrup pumps every where, ready to put out fires and incendiary bombs. Car and lorry headlamps were covered with black metal hoods with a slot in them about 陆鈥� (8mm) wide to stop overhead aircraft seeing their lights. The war affected us at Leigh-on-Sea which was in the bounds of Southend-on-Sea, and in-between was Westcliff-on-Sea. Westcliff was taken over by Royal Navy as it was predominantly Jewish and much of the Town was empty as they had nearly all moved away. It was fenced off and called H.M.S. Westcliff. (Those people still left were allowed to live in their houses, but needed a pass).

Us children witnessed many events during the war, we collected shrapnel, bits of cloth from parachutes (green and white), brass shell cases and black and white stripes of paper, used by the Germans to confuse our radar. I saw a German plane shot down which went down into the Thames, we had a few near misses with incendiary bombs, a land mine which took out half a street; luckily nearly every one was out, and we had a few Butterfly bombs. The nearest bomb was about two hundred yards up our road. A German plane was making a run for home and dropped his bombs willy-nilly to lighten the load; one in nearly every other road all around us. The last one hit the gas main in Pall Mall and there was a 20 foot flame, shot into the air. I could see the glare of the flame from our front room; I was quite upset because my father would not let me go outside to look at it.

The most spectacular things we saw were a large formation of bombers flying at night over our house, there seemed to be hundreds of them. My grandma Smart had the nearest miss, a bomb went though the pavement outside her front door in Gillingham, Kent, it ended up under her hall, but it did not go off. My father being the Police force was able to go over the Thames to see his Mother.

On one occasion we went over the Tilbery Ferry. Sometimes we would have to wait, while the minesweepers went up the Thames.

While in Kent we stayed at Grandma Sayers鈥檚 bungalow at Wigmore. There we witnessed a remarkable sight; about every few hours three Doodle-Bugs flew over the bungalow, in line, on route to London; one over-head one to the right, the other on the left. I think the guns tried to shoot them down over the Darland Banks near by. Back home we witnessed one of the first V2s. My father came home from night duty one night and said a V2 had just taken-out a garage on our arterial road. There was not any sound.

We had soldiers billeted in the empty houses all around us, a local garage around the comer was turned into a cook house and it had piles of coal stacked outside. Red army soldiers used to march through our 8 foot alley for meals, singing Polish songs. They had a red star on their caps. On the return journey it was noticed each soldier was carrying a piece of coal, there was not much heat in those empty houses. Many of the houses had their fences and stair rails burnt.

Before D-Day all the soldiers were all busy greasing up the vehicles and putting the exhaust pipes up over the roofs ready for the landings. One service my sister and I helped with; the soldiers were not very good at sewing, so we volunteered to sew their badges on the uniforms. I did build up a nice collection of Army Badges (which I still have on a snake buckle belt of my fathers). D-Day was looming-up and we could not see across the river Thames for ships of all shapes and sizes, there must have been hundreds. One thing left on the mud near Southend-on-Sea pier, was one of the concrete blocks, destine for the Mulberry Harbour - the one that never made-it and broke in two. We had a Spitfire airfield at Rochford, not far away, which is now Southend-on-Sea airport. To get into Rochford town we had to go over a humpback railway bridge next to the airport, at the top was a large poster, forbidding anyone stopping to look or take photos.

In the War we managed with food; although not vegetarians, we had one of our ration books as a vegetarian. This enabled us to get cashew nut butter, dried bananas (they were like whole, like sticky sausages about 4陆鈥� long by 陆鈥� thick) and other items instead of meat, bacon and cheese. There was a lot of bartering went on, the last items to come off ration were sweets, around 1946(?) - we all stuffed our faces.

I sometimes tell my grandchildren, how we used to play games on the roads, marbles, whip and top, hockey on roller skates, with old walking sticks, cricket and football and we would have to stop about every half hour to let a car go by which were mostly black. They would give me some funny looks in disbelief. I never felt in great danger during the war years, it did seem to drag on but we managed.

Other memories of the war;

We had fireworks of a kind, they were mostly table fire works, like the pyramids that when lit oozed out a sort of brown foam in a snake like pattern.

Another time we got into trouble when we went to a Air Raid Post and had an 1陆鈥� (40mm) thick green section added to the end of our gas masks with sticky tape, without Dad's permission. It was added to combat Mustard Gas. We had to carry our gas masks every where.

There were large concrete blocks spaced about 18" (1/2 m) apart all along the sea front, these were about 4鈥� (1.2m) cube. At the end of the war these were ideal to sun-bath on.

We were glued to the wireless every night for news, and listened to Lord Hor Hor who was a German boardcaster, there was not any TV then. I did see an early pre-war television at a school friend's house, but there were not any programs. The TV was like a wooden box with a screen of about 10鈥� (1/3 m) square, standing on the floor.

It was all 'make do and mend鈥�. Dad repaired our shoes and cut our hair and Mum made our clothes and darned our socks. All children were given 1/3 of a pint of milk in small bottles at school every day also during the holidays which we had to go and fetch.

One incident my father told us about while a police station duty officer was one day a soldier was brought in who had one arm. When they checked up, the army said they had a soldier of that name missing but he had two arms, and on checking they found that he had strapped his arm behind his back and was a deserter.

Although aged 72 and a Great Granddad I still remember with affection, the years of the war as if it was yesterday, it was a time of great stress for some people and many lost their lives but things do not seem to get much better.

When will we learn.
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Added by: Alan Brigham - www.hullwebs.co.uk

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