´óÏó´«Ã½

The situation at home — I remember having to get up during the night. My father was working in the collieries so he wasn’t at home. So I was just at home with my mother. I mean obviously the situation was fraught — you’ve got a woman on her own at home and then just me, toddler, you know, having to get up during the night for the air-raids and the sirens going. When I hear them now on broadcast and old stuff it brings back straight away that whirling noise.

AIR RAIDS

We used to have to get up and light the candles to go downstairs — no electric lighting, we had gas lights — and you hadn’t got to put lights on that would give a signal through your blackout. And we had an indoor air raid shelter: it wasn’t like everybody else where they had their Andersen shelter outside, it was (I forget the name of it, it will have a specific name) but it was under the table shelter. And we used to crawl into that. Mother used to put the steel cages, sides, on so there was no rubble would fall in when you got bombed. And it was a shelter but it had no floor. The black beetles used to crawl along the oilcloths and you had to sleep there! (No carpets in them days. I mean you’re going back to that now, bare floor situation, but it was oilcloth).

I remember all that because it was a real scary situation, I mean I was just three maybe, being locked in there waiting for the all clear to sound before you could came back out again. That was a different siren noise I forget how it went. You went to sleep but it was day light when you woke up next morning. Both asleep but lying on the floor with just the pillow which you’d brought from upstairs. And just blankets in those days (no duvets) — and the beetles!

And sometimes I remember apparently I had to have medication which was in those days for your nerves. It was a blanket thing for every youngster but I used to take this vile bottle of some sort of phosphorine or something — it sounds like a gas bomb that! — I probably have the word wrong but it was a long thin bottle like you see in the antique shops now — and every time I took it I just used to throw it up. So Mam used to make this chocolate fudge — no sweets in those days — this cakey stuff with cornflakes and I used to take it after I’d taken this stuff. You can imagine — being under a table … It was particularly vile. I can see it on the shelf in the pantry in the kitchen — this little thin bottle. Just a little teaspoonful.

And sometimes, particularly when Dad was at home, maybe weekends and whatnot, we used to go in the pantry rather than go under the table because I would imagine if there was three of us it was a bit of a squeeze to get under the table. We used to go in the pantry which was under the stairs and all the pots and pans on the shelf. We used to go in there and there was always a smell. The gas meter was in there. You put the pennies in in those days. There was a smell off that. You were in this cupboard and I remember my father being wary of the candle with the gas meter.

And remembering the vibrations … I don’t know whether it would be enemy bombers or if it was our aircraft — but the vibrations that there were and the pots and pans shaking above you on the shelves. And I remember this particular night. The people next door, he was the postie for the area but he was always ill. Seemed like a very old man to me but he wouldn’t be because he was working. The lady next door knocked on the door during an air raid so Dad had to go to the front door to see. We thought he’d taken a very bad turn. And he opened the front door just at the split second that this bomb dropped at Throckley (I lived at Ryton then) and it was across the river directly. And the shock wave must have come across the valley. He opened the front door and it blew my Dad back up the stairs. There was the porch which was about 6-8 feet, then the staircase going up stairs and it blew him back from the front door to the stairs with the shock. I don’t know what size bomb it would be. Talk about split second timing! And Dad lying on the stairs trying to get his breath back. It turned out this old chap next door had taken a bad turn and Dad had to go in there to sit with him. I remember that distinctly, thinking the bomb had hit my father. This all happened at night time as far as I can remember.

THE DAY THEY BOMBED THE CLYDE

My mother used to have spells of ill health - she may have been expecting my sister who was born in 1944 and my aunt was staying with us from Paisley, she came down. And we were lying on the floor looking at the bombers coming across. We were the last avenue in a row of avenues and the next was the doctor’s garden which was a huge acreage so it was all open ground. It was fenced but it was open garden and you could see the sky. And there was wave upon wave of these aircraft flying in but apparently it was a German daylight raid on Glasgow on the Clyde. And they were coming across wave after wave and the whole place shaking with the noise. We were lying on the floor looking up through the window probably under the shelter — under the table - when I think about it. Wave upon wave. And when you think about Ryton and if they crossed from the North Sea say Roker or Sunderland area coming from Germany direct. And they’d go across, fly across Otterburn and across to Glasgow. But apparently that’s what it was because I used to say to my father ‘Could you remember that?’ and he’d say ‘You’re right. That was the day that they bombed the Clyde’. And I can distinctly remember it — lying on cushions looking up and the vibrations. So that was a particularly vivid memory. There was hundreds and hundreds of these bombers. Just awe! And the noise and vibration. I mean, you never thought they would drop any bombs on you. I didn’t even know they were German bombers — they were aircraft.

FERN DENE

Nana, as I called her, and Grandad lived at Crookhill which is along from Ryton. It’s all housing now but then it was all open fields. And we used to come from Nana’s back home to Ryton and then the search lights were crossing the sky — criss-crossing — and you could hear the drone of the German bombers they were looking for. And we used to sometimes walk back through this low road called Fern Dene (the road’s still there — the bend’s still there on the bottom - all built up around there now). But when you came down through Fern Dene on the left there was a plantation which is still there. In the trees was a platform where the search light battery was and we used to walk past there, and we used to look across and my Dad used to say ‘Look! There they are! Look!’ and you could see them all silhouetted. The beam was going up from this huge lamp and you could see the heat, steam or what ever it was coming out from this huge lamp and the guys sitting there with the tin hats looking up at the sky and trying to pinpoint the aircraft that were there. I often think about it. The platform that they were on is still there. It’s all overgrown of course. But the level ground, a bit like a golf tee, where the generators were I suppose and the search light battery which had to be level, it’s still there to this day.

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