大象传媒

I began to understand as I grew a little older the terrible era we were going through. I recall a bomb being dropped at the bottom of our street and you could hear a whistling sound, followed by silence, then a very loud bang. I think it was one of the less dangerous bombs because I remember it did鈥檔t cause a lot of damage, although all of the windows were blown out of the whole street with the impact. There was never any warning when these bombs were dropped, I remember a young girl walking past our front door she had a bowl of pease pudding in her hand, she had just bought it from the shop, my mother pulled her into our house for safety but all she seemed worried about was what her mother would say when she saw all the fragments of glass in the pease pudding! Everyone had a brick air raid shelter in their backyards and when the siren sounded the alarm that there was going to be an air raid, my mother would bundle us into the shelter, you never knew what time of day or night it would be. There was bunk beds built into the wall and I hated it as you seemed to get grit in your eyes caused by the brick and cement walls. It was ironic when you think back as they built these shelters which were supposed to keep you safe, but they were only a few feet away from the house. If a bomb had been dropped on our house it would have blown us to kingdom-come. My father always insisted on staying in the house refusing to go into the shelter sadly he died through heart trouble when I was only seven years old. I remember one time being very afraid when I was in the shelter, because an air raid warden has come to see if we were safe and when I saw him dressed in his uniform and wearing a tin helmet, I thought it was a German. On the waste land near the railway line there were huge barrage balloons, sometimes they would be on the ground and other times they would be soaring high in the air. The balloons were to deter the enemy into thinking that they were aircraft from the distance. There were quite a lot of American and English air force men based near and they attracted a lot of loose women, so I鈥檓 told. Who could blame them for trying to get a few cigarettes and chocolates and if they were lucky some American stockings and a good night out into the bargain! Everything was rationed because of the war. I had never seen a banana until I was nine years old! The war came to an end in 1945 and everyone was so happy except the families who had lost their loved ones. I remember one lad had been held prisoner of war by the Germans, the locals held a big street party in his honour it was absolutely wonderful. Someone brought a piano out into the street and she played all day and night, everyone was so happy, it left an everlasting memory in my mind. If only communities were like that now, everyone helping each other. After the war people started to get on with their lives and it seemed at times that nothing had happened, although everything was still rationed for a long time.

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