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I lived in Lincolnshire when the war began, in a little village called Fulbeck, I moved there with my husband before the war started. My husband’s name was John Bailey and he was in the R.A.F. He was based at RAF Cranwell, so I lived with the landlady of the house, and he’d come back to me every night. Planes would fly over a lot at night during the blackouts - The blackouts were awful. You couldn’t show a light anywhere; if you did Gerry would know.

My husband was later posted to York so again, I went with him. York’s such a lovely place but it was awful during the war: planes were constantly flying over with bombs as we were so close to the coast. You couldn’t tell if they were English or German when they were in the air but sometimes they flew so low you could see the details on them. When this happened and when the sirens sounded we’d just have to run to the shelters. We had our own shelter — it was quite a big one which we shared with all of our neighbours. The one shelter we had was under a shop — we used to go down there. We had lights and gas heaters down there, and sometimes we did things like sewing.

About the second night after we’d moved to York was a big air raid and they had to save the camp. I was at a neighbours house, she was very kind to me, yes she was. I made some good friends during the war — there was a good spirit. After that second night we had to go to her Auntie’s near Earswick (just out of York) it was safer there and she had a big cellar which we sheltered in, I was still scared but not as much.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Dela Pugh and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See another of Della's stories:

• Good at making something out of nothing

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