大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshome guard and added to the site with her permission.

I was 16 when war started. My mother had died the year before and I stayed at home in Beverley being the housekeeper for my father and two brothers.

I became an Air Raid helper. I had a tin hat and was based at the Air Raid Station. But luckily nothing ever happened even though we were near Hull and Hull was very badly bombed.

When the Air Raids started there we were asked if we had any spare room for evacuees and we took in a couple with their child. My father was a strict teetotaller and the evacuee liked his beer - so we were glad when they found other accommodation!!

We used to go to some Common Land called the Westwood and watch the searchlights criss crossing the sky. Sometimes we'd see an aircraft caught in the beams and we'd hear the guns. As time wore on we got very casual about the Air Raid sirens and we didn't bother to get up. But one night I woke up to find myself with the ceiling in bits on top of me - a bomb had dropped near the barracks about a mile away.

My father joined the Home Guard and my brother, Raymond Lundie, joined the RAF when he was 19. He trained for two years in Iraq and then joined Bomber Command as a wireless operator/rear gunner. On one mission the aircraft flew so high that his legs were frozen stiff when he came down.He had to be invalided out of the RAF in 1945.

Of course we were rationed - but I remember a friend whose mother always seemed able to make pastry - one day she told me her secret - she was using liquid paraffin! My uncle gave us some chickens so we were all right for eggs but I remember always having to mend things. I'm still very mean and always really scrape out my jars!

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