大象传媒

In 1939, I was aged 18 when the war broke out. I lived at home with my father Frank, brother Freddie and sister Sylvia.
I was working as a housemaid for the village GPDskene. On the Sunday when the war started, we heard the siren and we were told to wear our gas masks. I had to put on my gas mask on, it felt cumbersome, a scary feeling as you thought you would be gassed.
Your father was a stoneman at Ellington Colliery on nightshift, he was a sergeant in the homeguard. Your brother Freddie was a miner , Frank was called up in the Navy. Your girl friend Gladys Kidd was called up in thr ATAS, aged 18. My sister Sylvia was in the WAFS as a teleprinter. My mother died when I was 16 so I looked after the home, exempt from being called up, I had to go in front of a work tribunal every three months.
I became the postwoman as the postman was called up. You could tell the news was bad by envelopesd and you knew when there was pregnancies and gossip.
You used to deliver by bike to the outlanding houses or walked.
As your father was a miner on the coal face, he got bananas. All we had in the village store, we had the Acak at Cresswell, my father would entertain 4 or 5 Acak men and bring them back every week.
Prisoners of War used to march from Cresswell to Lynemouth picture house. There was a terrible air raid at 3am on a Sunday. A land mine landed on a street of houses and they were destroyed, one person was killed. Your house windows were all shattered. I lived in a colliery house and every house had a brick wall built under the stairs to go to when the sirens went.
There were evacuees from Byker, Newcastle Upon Tyne living with families. Your father wrote every week to your brother Frank on a navy hospital ship, he was a sick bay attendant on HMS Edinburgh 91.
He lived in Russia for 9 months on the Port Archangel.
My father was on night shift, your brother was kept awake every night by air raids as we lived where the ACAC was preventing the planes reaching Newcastle Upon Tyne. Every nighht sirens went on. We loved Churchill to hear his voice, he was very uplifting. When the Battle of Britian was on through the day, I was looking up in the sky day light and the drone of air planes. The airforce men attracted the local women as their husbands were in the NE Fuseliers.

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