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This story is submitted by a volunteer on behalf of Radio Bristol Action desk at City of Bristol College.

It was early September 1939 when I was nine and I was living in Doncaster. We had already been issued with gas masks when quite soon after the war had been declared the authorities sounded the siren during the night to make sure that they were operating correctly. As it was during the night, no radios were on and no one knew that it was just a test. When the sirens went off my mother immediately paniked, got all four children out of bed (me, my two sisters and brother) and made us put on these smelly gas masks. We were all terrified and shaking. Once my father saw us, he was a big blunt blacksmith: he said, "What the blazes are you doing with those things on!" (or words to that effect).

The next day relating it to the neighbours, we all laughed about it, but at the time it was not funny.

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