大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jean McLean of Renfrewshire Libraries on behalf of Netta Caldwell and has been added to the site with her permission. Netta Caldwell fully understands the site's terms and conditions

I was 11 when the war started and in the last year of primary school. When war was declared we got an extra week off school as we had been due to start back on 4th September. We had to take our gas masks to school and got a row if we forgot them. I wore dog tags with my details round my neck
I even had to go into school to sit the qualifying exam although the rest of the school was off. This was just before Christmas. I started at senior secondary school in February of the following year in a prep class.

At school we saved for waste paper The house that saved the most got away early on a Friday once a month. We always seemed to get away early as one of the boys had connections with a shop!

We had a lot of air raid drills when we had to go to the shelter. My aunt lived near the school and I had permission to go to her house. Anyone that lived near the school had permission to go home during the practice.

There was a lot of fund raising in the school for the war effort like warship week or spitfire week

We also took in comforts for the forces, we knitted socks and balaclavas etc.

We were sent home the day after Greenock bombing as teachers were going there to help out.

We had an Anderson shelter in the garden, our neighbours shelter faced us. We had everything prepared to go to the shelter. A case with birth certificates etc.and also flasks of hot water which we lifted as we went out. The Greenock and Clydebank raids meant that we spent a long time in the shelter. We had two bunk beds for my sister and myself and two deckchairs. My father was a sector captain in the fire guard responsible for our area. My brother was a messenger attached to a fire station taking messages from there to wherever they needed if there was no telephone

We learnt a lot over the years of make do and mend. I had a skirt made from my brother鈥檚 trousers! Because of all the scarcities at the shops if you saw a queue you joined it without knowing what it was for.

My mother went back to work in the wages office at pressed steel in Linwood so I had to collect rations and shopping. Once a year when the new ration books came out I collected them and could wait for two hours in that queue.

I left school at fourteen and worked in the co-op office. We used to go for lunch to a british restaurant (government run) You paid for what you wanted when you went in and then were given tokens You took the tokens to self service counter and picked what you wanted.
I had to register at 16 and id card was changed to an adult but couldn鈥檛 be called up until you were 18

On VE day there was dancing in the streets, with crowds down the town at the Cenotaph.

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