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HOLMEWOOD: AIR RAIDS, BOMBS AND RATIONING FROM A YOUNG BOY鈥橲 PERSPECTIVE.

This story was submitted.. Alan Allsop

Alan was about six when the war started and remembers that it all seemed like a big game to everyone at school. They had days off, could be sent home and spent time practising Air Raid drills.

The school鈥檚 Air Raid shelters were across the road from Slack Lane, against the Tip. An adult would lift the top off the shelters, and then they all climbed down long ladders into a big underground shelter. Alan remembers that there was always one to two feet of water at the bottom. Every child had a job to do (such as taking books, pencils etc.) when the sirens went. Alan鈥檚 was to take the tin of biscuits from the cupboard in case they were underground for a while. The drills were fun to begin with and they would practise having lessons in the shelters, but after awhile it was not so exciting.

Heath School was used as an Air Raid Warden Post (ARP). Two or three classrooms were taken over including the main hall, and Alan recalls gas masks and gas capes hanging on all the pegs. The children began to have their lessons taught at the Zion and Bethal Chapels and at the St Alban's Mission.
Alan also remembers the iron railings that separated the boys鈥� playground from the girls鈥� playground being taken for the war effort, as well as the garden railings from Devonshire Terrace and Heath Rd.

SHEFFIELD AIR RAIDS.
Things began to seem real by October 1940 when enemy planes began to fly over nightly to bomb Sheffield. The air raid sirens sounded, but after a while many people chose not to use the shelters but to pull the door to, and stand and watch from the street. You could hear the droning of the planes and then the searchlights went on and lit up the enemy planes in the sky. Alan remembers a neighbour regularly singing 鈥淪ilver Wings in the Moonlight鈥�, as the planes went over. They watched the flashes as the bombs exploded and the sky was lit up.

At one point Alan was living in Tupton and he remembers that his grandfather didn鈥檛 really recognise how dangerous things might be and would want to stand and watch on the step with the door open. They would pull him inside, and then stand and watch themselves 鈥� but with the door shut this time!

BOMBS FALL NEAR HOLMEWOOD.
Early one morning in October 1940, the air raid sirens went at about 6.30am. Alan and his family were living on Hardwick Street in Holmewood and, in common with many people across Britain, had created an air raid shelter in the pantry under the stairs in their house. The windows had been bricked up, and the children had a mattress on the floor under the stairs, and their parents had bunk beds at the bottom end of the pantry.

On this particular morning the explosions shook the house and windows, so they knew that the bombs had fallen reasonably close to Holmewood. When the continuous 鈥榓ll clear鈥� siren sounded Alan couldn鈥檛 wait; he was dressed and straight out the door to school at 7o鈥檆lock in the morning!

Three major bombs had fallen; one in the Pit Yard, one in the fields, and one near Brunt鈥檚 Farm at Stainsby. Amazingly, no real damage had been done at any site. A cow was killed at Brunt鈥檚鈥� Farm, and at the pit yard the bomb fell in the brickyard at the bottom of the wood.

Alan was prevented from going into the pit yard, but he ran over the fields to Stainsby where he found the crater still smoking. He looked for shrapnel and found a lump, red hot, jagged and as big as his hand. He remembers 鈥榡uggling鈥� it all the way to school, as it was too hot to hold. The teacher took it from him and put it in the window bottom to cool. Alan remembers thinking that that would be the last that he saw of it! But at home time she fetched it out, wrapped it up and told him to go straight home with it, and to be careful because it was sharp. Alan still has his Trophy to this day!

Later Alan did get into the pit yard and rescued the tip of the bomb to add to his shrapnel collection, but has since lost that particular trophy!

LUCKY ESCAPE.
On another occasion a Bomb fell in the pit yard at Holmewood. A chap was walking along the pavement outside the Heath Road chip shop, when a piece of shrapnel dropped at his feet. He took it straight into Eales鈥檚 chip shop where it was weighed in at over 2lb! The next morning all the kids went to look at the chunk out of the pavement on their way to school!

RATIONING
As a child, Alan can recall the rationing of clothes, sweets and meat, as well as his mother swapping butter rations for sugar etc. and using dried egg powder, which Alan used to like.

His mother used to shop at the Coop but with the onset of rationing she switched to Hancock鈥檚 Shop, as Mrs Hancock would look after her regular customers. If a lorry came into the village with something good, the news would spread round the village like wildfire. Mrs Hancock would tell people that she hadn鈥檛 got any, but tell her regulars to come back later when she would get the good stuff out from behind the curtain. One day Alan remembers being really excited as the word came round that Hancock鈥檚 had got a delivery of bananas. At 7pm in the dark of the blackout, Alan raced round to the shop, collected the bananas, and ran back home 鈥� straight into the wall at the end of Hardwick Street! He remembers a split lip and knocking out a tooth, BUT he held onto the bananas!

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