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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Bridie Wright of Wakefield Libraries and Information Services on behalf of Brenda Wigglesworth and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
I remember going for my gas mask to a large house on the top of Quarry Hill — where the green is now — in Horbury. It was a Mickey Mouse mask and my sister had a larger one — a box type for a baby to be put inside, a bit like a ventilator. We used them when the air raid sirens sounded and everyone went into the shelter. My father Lewis was killed along with his two friends on the 2nd or 3rd March 1944 in Station Road, Chatham, Kent, whilst helping to evacuate people from their homes. Bombs coming over the docks demolished the houses. I remember my father’s military funeral as a grand affair at St. Peter’s Church, the coffin being carried by 6 soldiers to the cemetery. I remember thinking that my dad had been buried in Australia because the grave seemed so deep. I was only 6 years old.
I remember the school assemblies in which we would hear every few weeks that someone had lost a father or an uncle. It was Easter time when my dad died and I remember a local lady making eggs with cocoa using her own moulds.

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