大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Sarah Cooper at the AGC Museum on behalf of Alma Metcalfe and has been added to this site with her permission. Alma Metcalfe fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

In September 1939 I was 12 1/2, living in Lincoln with my Mother and Uncle. I was at Lincoln Girls' High School, a rather snobby establishment where the elite demanded of new girls "are you fee paying or" (with an implied sneer) "scholorship?" The war for me was fairly quiet - blackout and rationing, of course, and Uncle Baden was an ARP Warden (his area was near the Cathedral). He was a senior insurance agent with a petrol allowance for work, as had Uncle Arthur, a policeman at Ruskington, a village near Seaford. With our rural connections we did not lack supplementary eggs. We dutifully listened to the news on the wireless, and bought our savings stamps and certificates.

The military presence in Lincoln was mainly Air Force, with a lot of bomber bases in the surrounding area. RAF, Commonwealth and "Free" Allied (principally Polish) airmen, and glamourous Americans. There was even the occasional uniformed Turkish officer - presumably there was a training deal with Turkey to "keep them sweet". The officers tended to congregate at the Saracen's Head, though a curiosity was that on Saturday's the main bookshop, Ruddock's, was always full of Americans. The army was not prominent locally, though there was the new Barracks, depot of the Lincolnshire Regiment. They staged superb pantomimes at Christmas, of a very high standard and eagerly anticipated.

Down Long Leys Road, where I lived, was a new military hospital, brick huts, and still in use. We would see the recovering casualties in their Hospital Blue outfits. We had an allotment on the site and had to move to another one when the hospital was built. We had a family air raid shelter dug into the face of the old clay pit in the adjoining brick works though we never actually used it. The school had a shelter near the Usher Art Gallery lower down Lidnum Hill, though we only used it once, as a practice. We carried our gas masks, as instructed, but I must admit that I only had mine on twice, was too terrified to breathe and only held my breath. What would I have done in a real emergency, I wonder.

The most obvious way the war came home to us was as we heard our bombers going out in the evening and, sadly, rather fewer returning in the early morning. One, limping home, crashed into a local church, St Mathias, killing the members of the crew who had remained on board. One night in 1940 there were a lot of German bombers passing over westwards, with their characteristic pulsing engine note. We learned afterwards that this was the Coventry raid. There was a sensational report one morning that Marks & Spencer in Lincoln had been bombed. Into the city we trailed but M & S looked much the same. It appears that a single incendiary had hit the store and was dealt with by the fire-watchers.

Italian PoWs, in their chestnut brown battle-dress uniforms, were to be seen working in farms. They were not seen as threatening, rather as friendly but slightly tragic figures. They walked, presumably lightly escorted, from their barracks to their work place.

At school we were suspicious of a new Geography teacher, Miss Overy, who arrived from another part of the country. She was (professionally, of course) naturally very inquisitive about the area. Patriotically, we thought she might be a spy and collectively refrained from supplying her with information. One of the major businesses in Lincoln was Ruston Bucyrus where the first tanks had been maufactured in the Great War, but this was never mentioned in School.

VE-Day was celebrated in the City with dancing in the street near the Stonebow, and that was it! As I said, a quiet war.

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