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This contribution to People’s War was received by the Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Norfolk and submitted to the website with the permission and on behalf of Mr. Alan Gibby
I was living in Gibraltar when war was declared in 1939, my Father was a master mariner and I, Alan Gibby was nearly 8 years old.

The first image of war that I saw was during a day trip with my family to Europa Point (the southern most tip of Gibraltar). In the distance we saw the Ark Royal ship slowly approaching, badly damaged but still afloat. This was quite a sight, especially as it had been reported as sunk!
My father was called into the navy in September 1939. One of his roles was on the contraband patrol on the docks. One day a ship wouldn’t stop for him to search it and he therefore gave the order for a six inch naval gun to fire a shot across the bows. At this time I was looking out of the living room window with the family bull dog between my legs. This dog had been on the ships with my father during the Spanish Civil War and therefore knew to run when there was a shot fired. That was exactly what he did when we heard the shot that my father had ordered, causing me to end up riding on his back and crashing into my mother who was just coming into the room! It definitely broke the tension of the war when my father came home and we found out that it was him that had caused the afternoons chaos!
My father was demobbed from the navy in January 1940. He then continued as a civil worker with reserved occupation, organising the bunking of steam ships to get the correct convoy. In the June of that year Gibraltar was evacuated, the only people who remained were military and civilian workers responsible on the docks.
My father bought a ticket for my mother and me to sail to England on the S.S Gothland, in the summer of 1940, costing £9. He remained in Gibraltar and I did not see my father again until the summer of 1945 when I was 13 years old! The journey was eventful and took 10 days rather then the normal 3 due to the ship having to take a long route to avoid submarines. We would eat with the captain at night, and during the day I would spend my time with the men painting the ship grey. Afterwards they would go down into their mess and eat thick slices of bread with jam. I wanted to be like them and they humoured me by allowing me to go to their mess and eat this with them.
Half way through the voyage, I remember vividly sitting eating an orange and throwing the peel out of the port-hole when the ship next to us, only 300 yards away, was torpedoed. I looked up and saw people jumping off of the ship! We discovered later that only five people had died from the ship and they were trapped in the engine room when the torpedo hit.
As our ship travelled up the English Channel and then up the Thames, we saw boats on their way back from Dunkirk. They were covered in soldiers and to a child it looked like one massive kahki. All the crew on our ship were instructed to give them a cheer. The Thames was littered with damaged ships; I distinctly remember seeing a destroyer without its tunnel, yet still floating.
We disembarked at Tilbury, where the war was very evident. The station was full of hospital and Red Cross trains, carrying the wounded from Dunkirk. From here we were evacuated to Cardiff, moving into a house near the main railway line that was used to take away coal from the pits.

We did not have our own air raid shelter so we would use the community street shelter made from brick and concrete. One night, a timber yard was on fire and two churches also on fire creating a triangle with our shelter in the middle. Normally the fire (incendiary) bombs were dropped first and then the explosives sent afterwards. We were terrified as we knew we were right in the centre of everything. However on this particular night these bombs were not sent due to bad weather, we were very lucky!
The nearest house to the shelter lived an Irish navvy. He would never come into the shelter during an air raid. I remember him saying ‘No German is going to kick me out of my bed!’ One day, a land mine was dropped nearby and there was an extremely load explosion. We were all huddled in the shelter when the door opened and the Irish man appeared at the door. This sight broke the tension as we all started laughing. He was standing there in his night shirt, trying to hold his trousers up around him!

In 1942 I went on a school camp in Nottage near Porthcawl. In order to get to the beach we had to pass through a bombing range. Parachute Flares had been dropped here and were lying all over the field. A small group of us boys crept through the wire to collect these flares with their whit silk parachutes. When I got home from camp my mother found mine in my bag and marched me to the local police station to hand them in. They then came into school to ask the other boys to hand theirs in. I was not very popular after this!

My last wartime memory is that of VE night. We had a street party and it was the first time since the war that we had any kind of fireworks. Bangers had been quickly shipped in for parties across England. In order to make an even bigger bang, we would wedge these bangers under propped up dustbin lids so that they were thrown into the air and would come down with a crash!!

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