大象传媒

10/06/2005

My great grandfather used to live in the Alms Houses by Pickering Park and when they dropped the land-mine on Scarborough Street we all went around there in the morning to see if he was alright. We thought that it had fallen near his house.

We lived on St Nicholas Avenue and the had the big gun on Costello that used to rattle all the windows and the searchlight on Dairycoates, where Yankee Burger is now; opposite the Regis picture house; or where Regis used to be. We used to love going there. We used to go out at night and, I shouldn鈥檛 really tell you this, but people used to grow stuff in their gardens and as kids, I was about 7 or 8 at the time, we used to go along pinching their peas! Mother didn鈥檛 ever know though.

I remember it all seemed very exciting at the time, we were never scared, we used to watch the dog-fights between the planes and go out every morning collecting shrapnel. My aunt, who lived in Somerset Street got incendiaries in her roof and they had to walk from Somerset Street to our house with the two kids she looked after. My Uncle got killed.

As children you just never saw any danger in it all. We used to have a bogie and used to push each other to Hessle, we鈥檇 do so many blocks and then swap over. I remember them driving the cows down Hessle High Road from Priory Farm. When we went to bed on a night time we used to cross all of the knives to stop the planes coming over! I鈥檒l always remember the air raid warden, Mr Bucknell; 鈥淧ut that bloody light out!鈥� He was great though, he used to play with all of us kids. He was ever so friendly. It might seem daft, but we had some really good times as kids in the war. We used to have to go to school with our gas-masks. It was Pickering Road School we used to go to; there used to be shelters all the way down Pickering Road but in the school grounds they had their own shelters.

The only targets near to us was the docks and the railways, the big shunting yards, but I don鈥檛 think they ever managed to bomb the shunting yards. We were fairly lucky being away from the bombing really.

We used to always make our own games up, skipping, block, re-allio, British Bulldog; there used to be a ten-foot behind the houses and the boys used to play cricket down there. We could go anywhere we wanted to because it was safe in those days. Most of the time we were in park. It鈥檚 a very sad world today when you think that we were safer on the street in the middle of a war than the children are nowadays.
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Added by: Alan Brigham - www.hullwebs.co.uk

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