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My name is Alan Newey and I was born on the 3rd March, 1934 in a terraced house in Tipton, Staffordshire. I had a brother Des and a sister Freda. That same year we moved to a newly built semi-detached house in Bradleys Lane, Coseley, also then in Staffordshire. Early in 1939 I was enrolled at Christ Church Infants School,
Coseley and loved every minute of it. In April 1940 my sister Muriel arrived to swell the size of our family. Everything in the world appeared to be rosy and I was very content.

About this time I recollect that I became aware that everything in the world was not quite right and we were told we were at war with the ‘nasty Germans’. I was of course, too young to realise the implications of it all. I only know that very frequently, day and night, the siren at the local factory, Allen’s of Tipton, would wail out and we stopped whatever we were doing, left everything and made a dash across the road and down a long front garden to the little cottage there, where we squashed into the cellar. (Baby sister Muriel was always carried across in a wicker clothes basket). It seemed that every person in the lane was assembled and so there we all stayed until the siren screeched out the welcome ‘all clear’, and we all trooped back home. Five minutes later we often had to dash for the cellar again.

All this prompted my father to have a shelter built, at great expense no doubt, in the back garden. Two men seemed to work forever to construct it — a massive hole was excavated, a concrete floor was laid, walls and steps built of layers of bricks, a really thick reinforced flat concrete roof cast in situ, and the walls plastered. All it then needed was a door and bunk beds to be fitted and our bomb-proof shelter was ready. It was to be used on only a very few occasions.

By the time it was completed we had all become used to the sirens, blasé and no longer dashed for shelter at the sound of the first wail. We compromised by moving all the beds in the house downstairs into the front room — Mum and Dad slept in one bed, I across the bottom of their bed, Des and Freda in a three-quarter bed and baby Muriel in her cot. When an air-raid was in progress day or night, we squashed together under the dining room table.

Air-raid shelters appeared everywhere, of course — from massive, strongly built, multi-roomed public shelters constructed by the Government on any vacant plot of land and in school playgrounds, down to the small above-ground, corrugated-iron Anderson shelters erected in back gardens by the local council. Many people fitted them out as they would a bed-sitter and retired to them at night as if it were their bedroom, particularly in the early days of the war.

Naturally, our routine at school was severely disrupted by these air-raids. I can recall that when the sirens warned of a raid, we children who were present at school, (many parents kept their children at home), were taken to the cellars of nearby private houses by the teachers. I can remember going to a small terraced house, adjacent to the school in Church Road. Indeed, our school must have closed altogether in the early days because I can also recall our teachers taking lessons, in small groups, in pupils’ homes, mine included — we squashed in the front-room — it was great fun!

At the beginning of the war, an order was given enforcing the use of black curtains, as a black-out, to ensure that in the hours of darkness no artificial light escaped into the night from homes, offices, etc, which might be seen by pilots of enemy aircraft and cause them to drop their bombs. A.R.P. and Fire Wardens patrolled the streets and would soon knock the door if even the smallest chink of light was shown.

To help prevent flying glass when a bomb was dropped, all schools, offices and many house windows were decorated with strips of sticky brown paper — apparently, it really worked! In case the Germans dropped gas bombs, we were all issued with gas-masks, babies were given a frightful-looking, full-length mask with a Mickey Mouse face! Our gas masks arrived in cardboard boxes, Mum quickly made a leatherette case for each, complete with a shoulder strap, which enabled us to carry them with us wherever we went. Thankfully, we were never called upon to use them.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Sarah Evans of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Alan Newey and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See more of Alan’s stories:

• 2) Then a most momentous event occurred…
• 3) Back home at last
• 4) What a marvellous coincidence

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