大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jenny Christian of the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library on behalf of Patricia Townsend and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was five and a half when the war broke out. The news seemed to make my parents groan. I asked them why, and they told me about the First World War, and how terrible it was.

We had to have blackout curtains. We used to use pieces of wood to push them against the windows so that the light didn鈥檛 get out.

I can remember starting school. First of all we had gas masks. Later on, they had to fit an extra bit on the end to protect against a different type of gas. Every so often we had to put them on at school to have a practice.

We always used to think that we could tell the difference between the German and British planes from the sound they made.

I went to a school called St. Augustines Primary, which had shelters. It was bombed, so we went to Bull Close.

St Mary鈥檚 Church had a fire at the beginning of the war, which they managed to repair, but later in it went, which was a terrible shame. It had beautiful carvings with lots of fruit.

Most nights we went down to the Anderson shelter in the bottom of our garden. Quite early in the war we went to stay with relatives in Derby, but we weren鈥檛 happy there, so we came back.

I鈥檒l never forget one night in the shelter during a raid. It sounded like hail coming down on the shelter. From the sound, we all thought we鈥檇 lost our house, and our father was trying to make us feel better. But it was actually a crater in the middle of the road on St Clement鈥檚 Hill.

I remember one night after an air raid looking out of the window and seeing Norwich full of light, due to the blaze after an attack. I also remember hearing a gas warning, like a buzz, which used to come through after the air raid warning.

I can remember Curl鈥檚 (now where Debenhams is) going. There was a huge crater there. It later became a bus station and after that a car park.

The trolley bus lines were still in the roadway back then.

I also remember Bond鈥檚 having trouble. It used to be lots of different little shops.

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