大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries on behalf of Ivy Stott and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

We used to go to school. It was a real good walk. We had to carry our gasmasks every day. We had big air raid shelters built into the schoolgrounds, big enough for the whole school.
We had mock raids so we could learn how to put on the masks and get to the shelters. We had one mock raid where there was supposedly gas. Some children were frightened of the masks. They were claustrophobic and the teachers struggled to get them to put them on.
When you were at school you had a quarter pint of milk every day. In our area there was no such thing as school meals. There were no facilities. You had to go home, come back again; you had to walk. There were no buses. Everyone had to walk. There were few cars then. There were only about two or three cars in the village. They were the doctor's, the pit manager's. I think that would be all. There were vans for the shops, but I can only remember two private cars.
Rationing was a big, big problem. We had for a week, 2oz bacon, 2oz butter, half an ounce of sugar, one fresh egg each or egg powder which was odious. It was horrible! Like frying a platter of leather. Meat - we had 2d worth of corned beef and the roast of beef used to come to 1/9d for the week.
Me Mum used to make a great big pastie with the corned beef with leeks, onions and potatoes.
We lived in a business street and this butcher had a field where all the men went down and dug an air raid shelter. The butcher did the top. As soon as the sirens went we all went into the shelter for the night. We used to get so tired. You could make tea in there. Nothing was paid for by the council. The men did it all themselves and it was all communal. We were near to the docks at Hartlepool and they were forever being bombed.
There was no paper to decorate the walls in the houses. Me Mum got a big tin of distemper, like an emulsion. She got the room all done. We came out of the shelter this night and were sat round having a big mug of coffee when this terrific bang went off. It was a landmine in the fields. The coffee splashed up all over me mother's distempered walls! She was in tears. She'd waited so long for them.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.