大象传媒

This story has been added to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshome guard on behalf of Daisy Mason and has been submitted to the site with her permission.

I was ten years old when war started and on the point of going to Ingleton School from primary school in Newby. We were issued with gas masks and you had to rub the visor with a raw potato so that they wouldn't get steamed up. Heavy mesh had been put over the windows of the corridors in school so that the splinters of glass wouldn't fall in.

My father was a farmer. He had been a prisoner of war in Germany during the First World War - he had worked on a farm there and he had found the Germans very good to him. He just worked on the farm - he wasn't the type to escape.

I remember being very scared in the blackout - we were in total darkness - we had to feel our way around - we had to find our way to the toilet in the pitch dark. But you could see lights in the sky from the fires in Liverpool and Manchester and Barrow when they were being bombed.

One day a German plane came over - you could see the German markings on it. The pilot was looking for the railway and dropped a bomb in a field at Eldroth - no one was hurt.

There were evacuees from Bradford - some of them were nice and some of them were horrible. Mrs Farrer, the lady of the Manor, had five of them at Newby Cote - but we couldn't take any ourselves because our house was full already. But a couple from Sheffield, called Mr and Mrs Linfoot, did come to live in our sitting room. We never used it anyway. They had been bombed out. They were very nice and they stayed for four years!

I was 17 years old at VE day - we celebrated with a bonfire in the Park - it was great.

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