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"This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Barnsley Archives and Local Studies Departmentand Sami Unsworth from Darton Community School on behalf of Brenda Atkinson and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

I have lived in Mapplewell all my life and I was 2 years old when the war started, my birthday was in August.

I only went into air raid shelters when I was a school because Mum used to wrap me up and go into the cellar at home. We had to have blackout blinds.

Dad was a fireman and he had to know where to get the water from in the hydrants even in the dark. We had to have a telephone because he was a fireman.

If you were under 5 years old you could have a Mickey Mouse gas mask. We used to take it in turns going into the schoolyard. We used to play hopscotch, hide and seek, tag, whip and top. We couldn鈥檛 have a bonfire during the war because of we couldn鈥檛 let any lights show in the dark.

Mum was a housewife. She used to clean two days a week for a headmaster鈥檚 wife.

We had lots of happy times listening to the radio, especially Dick Barton, we used to play O鈥檚 and X鈥檚 a lot!

It didn鈥檛 feel threatening to be in the war but I was frightened when I heard the sirens. The nearest bombing was in Sheffield.

People came from Sheffield that worked in the Black Market. They used to come to the houses with everything that you needed!

Everyone was issued with a ration book and you had to be registered. In the ration book there were coupons to buy food and clothes. If you had big feet you got more coupons to get adult size shoes. You could only have 2oz of sweets a week. You couldn鈥檛 get fresh fruit. We sometimes got brown bananas, but never got fresh fruit. If there were a queue in the co-op everyone would join it even if they didn鈥檛 know what they were queuing for! Orange juice and cod liver oil was given to all the children you had to collect it from the food office. Mum had to go down to Darton for ours.

Everyone had to carry identity cards. You had to also carry a gas mask.

When I was 7 years old I went to the Church Girls Brigade.

At the end of the war everyone was happy. We had a street party with dancing and playing games.

Rations were still in use well after the war it was 1952 before sweets came off rations.

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