大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of Kathleen Cowpe with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

I was 6 years old during the war. I didn鈥檛 mind carrying my gas mask to school, it was a bit heavy but ok. Whenever we had to try them on at school the rubber smelt horrible and the glass steamed up. If we turned to each other the metal parts banged together.
They would check them and mine was too loose and the ARP man yanked it tight. It was horrible, I dreaded having to try them on. But luckily it was the last time we had to try them on. I remember it vividly.
We had 50 or 100 papers or books, lots of precious papers / books that went then, my Grandma said. They were used for salvage. The salvage van used to come with 3 women on every fortnight, Grandma sent some jam jars washed and scrubbed.
I remember keeping a metal black money box 鈥� I used to keep my chocolate in it 鈥� chocolate was more precious than money 鈥� I used to crave chocolate. I would run errands for a week to get a threpence.
We were lucky we didn鈥檛 get bombed, we heard it once at night as was frightened when they bombed Hucknall.
We were farmers and my Dad was a boy solider in WW1. He had come to Nottingham, there were no cars and he had to come on the bus, there was an important reason form him to go to Nottingham. Everyone had to carry gas masks, he said he wasn鈥檛 going to carry his gas mask, Mum said 鈥渢hey won鈥檛 let you on the bus with out it鈥�. He had a glint in his eye, he got the box took the mask out and took the empty box with him 鈥� no one queried it at all. Once he got to Nottingham he folded up the box and put it in his pocket then when he was going back he put it back together again. He was really chuffed with himself.

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