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I'm a pupil from Heaton Manor Comprehensive School, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, entering Mary Francis' story onto the website, and they fully understand the website terms and conditions of use.

When I lived in Harbottle Street, there was an old couple living across the road from us — Mr and Mrs Hornby. They lived with their daughter and grand-daughter. They had a big cellar under the house which we used when the air-raid sirens went off. They even had big metal bunk beds so the children could sleep at night time. When we were in the cellars, we performed concerts to keep our minds off what was going on above. Everyone did their turn and one man I remember particularly, Mr Moulding, had a mandolin and played for us. The kids always sang songs and near Christmas time we sang carols. While all this was going on, my dad was above ground — he was an air-raid warden. He was stationed around a large industrial place called Hawthorne Lesley’s. This was bombed and many people were trapped in the cellar of the Locomotive Pub. Dad helped to pull people out — everyone helped everyone else then. How strange when you think about us singing and dancing while people were trapped not so far away!

Later on my dad was a plane spotter down by the river — where the law courts are now. Sometimes he wouldn’t come home for days because my mother would put his dinner on a plate and I’d take it down to the river.

There were several large anti-aircraft guns over on Lobley Hill in Gateshead. When they went off you could hear them for miles — we were in Byker and we could hear them.

When I got evacuated most people couldn’t afford to buy their kids a kit bag, so the mothers would get a cushion cover and put straps on for the child’s shoulders. In our kit bags we had a tin of corned beef and some condensed milk which we would give to the family we were staying with. My mother and my sister Flora, who was only a toddler, were evacuated and they weren’t given very much to eat at all. Everyone then had to carry a gas mask. The baby gas masks were like incubators and the babies were put inside them like a crib.

In Newcastle, where the Warner Brothers’ cinema used to be, there was a goods station. This was bombed and because of all the sugar, butter, flour and other rations it burned for a very long time. The firemen were still pouring water on it weeks later!

On VE day and VJ day we had street parties and bonfires in the road where we lived, Harbottle Street. At the bottom of the street there was a tin church that we called The Tinny. The Tinny had huge wooden sleepers all around it and the kids went to pull them up for the fires. As they were doing that some policemen walked up and asked what they were doing. The kids all looked scared and said that they just wanted the wood for the fires. The policemen said ‘alright then’ and helped them pull up the wood!

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