大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Gerald Green and added to the site with his permission.

I was nine when the War broke out and lived in Armley - a district of Leeds. I had a brother and sister but my mother would not let us be evacuated - "No, " she said, "If we're going to go, we'll all go together." In the Air Raids we'd hide under the table and I remember a lady called Madge, who weighed about 18stone, pushed me under the table and then lay right on top of me. It was just an ordinary wooden table - it wouldn't have stopped a thing. I can still hear the bombs now - they made a horrible whining sound and you were just waiting for them to hit.

The cemetery across the road from us was bombed - it was near the railway and the Germans had been folowing the railway lines on a moonlit night. They must have hit a watermain too because our water went off and we had to queue with buckets at the watercarts.

All the windows were taped up in the houses and we had black out curtains. If an ARP warden saw a chink of light, they'd come and tell us to close the curtains. There was no coffee and there were no bananas and we had to queue up for dripping. Sometimes we'd hear they had something special at the shop and we'd all be dashing down the road. I really admire the way the women managed to spread the food out. There'd be a roast on Sunday; It would be cold meat on Monday; made into hash on Tuesday and so on...They were good housekeepers in those days.

One day I remember the lady next door talking to my mother. She was telling her about a young man from Guernsey who was looking for accommodation. His name was Jack Trebert - he was about twenty two and he was working on the railway. He had two other brothers in England as well as a sister and they had all been split up.

While he was with us Jack was taken ill and died. His brother Eddie, who was three years older then me, came down from Glasgow for the funeral and my mother invited him to come and live with us and eventually my mother sent for his other brother, David, who had been staying in Cheshire. She thought it would be nice for them to be reunited. We all mucked in together.

Eventually my sister got married to Eddie.

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