大象传媒

In September 1939, my brother aged eight, my sister aged six, and myself not yet five years old, were evacuated with other children from our hometown of South Shields in Co. Durham, to Workington in Cumberland. I have memories of new squeaky shoes, and a new pink coat and hat. I remember having a label pinned on my coat,and carrying a cone shaped packet of dolly mixtures as we walked in lines to the local railway station.Some of our teachers came with us and shared the teaching in our new school where we sat three to a desk with local children who teased us because of our Geordie accents.
At first there was much animosity between us and the local children especially at school.Sometimes there was trouble in the street on the way home with both sides eyeing each other suspiciously as we hurled insults and stones, each considering the other to be an enemy far more deadly than any Nazi.
On arrival at Workington, we had been taken into a big church hall where we stood in lines while the grown ups walked up and down with the billeting officers, claiming the children they had agreed to take in.
We watched as my brother was taken away by an old lady with grey hair and an unsmiling face, but I held on tight to my sister's hand and we were taken in by a couple named Mr.and Mrs.Heywood who we soon came to know as Aunty Olive and Uncle Tom. We learned later that they had thought we were twins when they first saw us.
Uncle Tom gave piano lessons in the front room and we were taught to answer the door to his pupils on arrival and take their coats before showing them into the room.
We were well looked after while we were there and sometimes they would be waiting in the car for us as we came out of school.
We would go for a ride into the countryside and collect eggs and vegetables from their friends who had a farm.The smell of leather still brings back the memory of the inside of the car and the comfort of the soft wool travel rug that was spread across the back seat.I think they must have been quite strict with us at times as I have a clear memory of watching in terrified silence as my sister was held down in her chair and forced to eat rice pudding which she hated. Because it was wartime and all food was in short supply, we were never allowed to leave anything on our plates.

By the spring of 1940 we were all home again. Back to the days when the first stroke of Big Ben heralding the 6 o'clock evening news brought silence in the house.
And back to our bomb damaged school and the morrison steel shelter bed in our small back bedroom.This was an oblong steel box with mesh sides that could serve as a table during the day and a bunk bed at night. Half a million of these shelters named afterthe Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, were distributed free throughout the country when the war started.
My sister and I slept on a mattress on the top and our brother slept on a single bed in the same room, diving across to the spare mattress underneath when the siren sounded. Then we would swing our legs over and crawl underneath to join him, often whacking our ankles painfully on the cold steel. Mam would rush from her room, squeezing in beside us and cradling the new baby who had been born while we were away.We would crouch together listening to the sound of enemy planes droning overhead.
Occasionally we'd hear the whine of the dreaded doodlebug bomb and than the ominouus silence just before it hit its target with a massive explosion. Eight thousand of these were dropped in the summer of 1944 and one night it was the railway line behind our house that was hit.
We kids went over the next morning to find a huge crater in the field next to the railway. This turned out to be our favourite playground during the following winter when the snow came and the crater was filled with hard packed ice and snow.
We slid on tin trays or anything we could lay hands on , right into the bottom of the crater, and then scrable and claw our way to the top again with wet wellingtons leaving raw red marks on our freezing legs.

At school we had air raid practice when we stepped smartly from our desks at the sound of the bell, put our gas masks in their cardboard boxes over our shoulders and march in twos with our teacher into the safety of the air raid shelter. When the siren went to warn us of a genuine air raid we went hrough the same procedure but then continued with our lessons. Sometimes our teacher would play the piano loudly and we would sing to block out the noise of the bombing.
Land of Hope and Glory.
Keep the home fires burning.
Run Rabbit Run,Run,Run.
We loved them all and sang them with gusto as the war raged on around us. At home we listened to Tommy Handley and workers playtime on the wireless.We were often woken from deep sleep by the wail of the siren, and lifted from our beds to be
carried to the safety of the shelter.
There we would sit with knees touching and chins thrust in to foul smelling rubber gas masks that were tightened round our heads so that the little window steamed up. We shivered with fear at the sound of an approaching plane and longed for the sound of the all clear so that we could get back to sleep. Dad was never around during the air-raids. He was in the National Fire Service and was either out on firewatching duties or driving one of the fire engines through the chaos that was caused by the incendiary bombs.
As the war dragged on, all our games became war centred. We girls clutched our dolls and raced for imaginary shelters made from the old clothes horse or two chairs pushed together and covered with a blanket. We played for hours making dolls ration books from scrap paper, cut up and ruled out into squares ready to cut out for coupons when we played shops. We made identity cards for our dolls, drawing pictures and writing descriptions of each one. We stood side by side in the back lane cradling our babies, holding shopping bags in imaginary queues and haggling with each other over extra tea or sugar off the ration. Our brother was more interested in roaming the streets wearing a tin hat and searching for pieces of shrapnel, or playing in the rain filled gutters with matchbox boats as mine sweepers or troop carriers. But sometimes he played with us pretending to be the air raid warden, yelling at us to get to a shelter, or to PUT THAT LIGHT OUT !!!
When he got bored with the game he would pretend to be a German fighter pilot in his aeroplane swooping at us with outstretched arms to drop bombs on us all.At which time Mam would intervene hearing our terrified screams and our game would be brought to an abrupt end.
By this time the small flat that had housed six of was becoming overcrowded so my sister and I spent alot of our time sleeping at Nanna's house which was only two streets away. We had our own bedroom there, and there was an Anderson shelter between clumps of grass in the untidy strip of back garden. This had been delivered in 1939 and was a shell of corrugated steel buried four feet deep into the ground and covered with earth.
In the early hours of the morning when the siren wailed, Nanna would grab her flask and her rosary and shepherd us in the pitch darkness down the garden and into the safety of the shelter. Inside it smelled of damp and candle wax. Sometimes water seeped in and had to be bailed out so it was very difficult to avoid the dampness. We would carry our blankets from the house and lie on the narrow bunks with our feet on stone hot water bottles, listening to Nanna saying her rosary and watching her shine the torch round the walls making little patterns of light picking out our pale faces. The long summer evenings were the best. We played out in the streets until it was late. Then Nanna would call us in and take us upstairs to bed.As soon as we heard the click of the living romm door when she went downstairs, we would clamber up to the bedroom window where we had a grandstand view of the pub on the corner turning out after ten o'clock. Sometimes there would be soldiers or sailors in uniform among the crowd that danced in the street. Occasionally someone would play the accordion, but more often there would be a drunken brawl and we loved watching these from the safety of our bedroom.
Sometimes Nanna would shout up to us and we would scamper back into bed,getting up again when we thought the coast was clear to find out who was winning the fight. Very rarely were the police involved,and often by the time they arrived the two who had been fighting were shaking hands and patting each other on the back. We were always glad when there was a happy ending.

Food rationing was introduced in 1940 with special needs identified by books with various coloured covers.When our baby brother was born in 1943 we had seven ration books in our family, and all I can remember about them is that they were always getting lost. Ours was a disorganised household and much shouting and yelling and turning out of draws and cupboards went on when it was time to go for the groceries. My biggest dread was being sent down to the food office to report a lost book. One of the women there terrified me with her questions and I struggled to remember the rehearsed excuse that mam had told me to give. Once, when I was given a form to take home for mam or dad to sign, I went outside into the corridor, and to save a trail home, I signed Mam's name myself, imitating her signature and filling in all the relevant details. When I got back inside I made sure I joined a different queue with a different woman who would not recognize me.

As South Shields was a major port it was closely linked to the war at sea. Although the beaches were cordoned off with barbed wire, we could still see the dark silhouette of the ships lined up on the horizon ready for battle.Local shipyards on the Tyne worked round the clock to repair ships that had fallen victim to torpedoes and enemy bombers. But those same bombers were determined to disrupt, if not totally destroy the river's war effort.
On August 25th 1940 the Gas Works in South Shields was hit but un April 1941 the Tyne Dock area where we lived suffered an attack
which was thought to be aimed at H.M.S. Manchester which was waiting in the river to convoy the new aircraft carrier 'Illustrious' to sea. Within days a shower of 6,000 incendiary bombs fell in the riverside area. Later that year the town was bombarded once more. More than eighty people died and three hundred were injured when the town's historic Georgian market place was razed to the ground along with Woolworths and Croftons the two stores that stood on the corner of King Street and the market place. My memories of that time are of seeing whole streets of terraced houses completly demolished by the bombs. Other houses were left half standing with ruined furniture and flapping torn curtains on view to passers by. I remember having to go to a different school nearby, while our own one was repaired.
Food was still rationed although the amounts varied from month to month according to availability of supplies. Families were encouraged to register with one shop for grocery items. The usual rations for our family of seven for one week were:
MEAT - eight shillings and tuppence worth.
BACON - one pound
CHEESE - seven ounces
COOKING FAT - seven ounces
EGGS - six
SUGAR - three pounds
SWEETS - one pound three ounces
DRIED MILK - one tin
DRIED EGG - one packet.
In February 1941 soap was rationed because of short supplies. We were allowed three ounces per month per person and it was usually green fairy soap or lifeboy toilet soap. Scented soap was only available very rarely and usually on the black market and very expensive. Fruit and vegetables were never rationed but people were encouraged to 'grow their own' Sometimes, oranges and apples would arrive at the fruit shop and I would be sent to stand in the queue and get whatever there was.My dad was a lorry driver at the time and one day he came home with a hessian sack full of juicy pears. Dad told us they were a present from a farmer in the country.We were given one each with thick slices of bread and margerine for our tea, and the rest were shared with neighbours and relatives and used to make fruit puree and jam.
The first shipment of bananas arrived at Avonmouth in Bristol, in the December of 1945. Many of the younger chil;dren had never seen this strange fruit before but we older ones relished the return of our soggy banana sandwiches. During the war, milk was given free to families where the Father earned less than two pounds per week. Otherwise it was tuppence a pint. Those of us at school got free milk, a third of a pint twice a day. We were also given a free spoonful of cod liver oil and malt every day at playtime. I hated this but was forced to have it. Bread and flour was in short supply and in 1941, the national loaf as it was known appeared in the shops. It was very unpopular and we kids only ate it because there was nothing else. It was grey looking and gritty but it was actually quite nourishing because the flour was unrefined and still contained most of the grain. In 1946 we were told that bread rationing was a possibility and by the end of July that year until 1948 adults were rationed to nine ounces of bread per week.
Factory workers were allowed a little more and children a little less.
By 1945 the whole country was celebrating our victory in Europe or V.E.Day as it came to be known.In almost every town and village in the country there were street parties and our town of South Shields was no exeption. As well as our own party, my sister and myself unknown to mam, managed to join in many of the parties in the nearby streets where our friends and relatives lived. Mam shortened our white May procession dresses and added broad sashes of red and blue ribbon.Our street was transformed into a riot of colour. Union Jacks fluttered from shop fronts. Red white and blue bunting hung across the street and some people had painted the brickwork outside the houses to match.Others had made crepe paper roses to decorate their doors and windows.
To our dismay, mam was not interested in decorating the house as the family were still grieving over the loss of two of our uncles during the war.
Frank Cook was the young husband of Aunty Belle and Daddy of baby Celia. He was lost at sea in 1942 on the HMS JURA, a minesweeper, which went down with all hands while it was clearing Tobruk Harbour ready for the Mediterranean Fleet.
Our other uncle was Jim McGuckin, the young brother of our Aunty Mary. Before the war he was a teacher at Delves Lane County School in Consett and was in the R.A.F. Voluntary reserve. He was killed in action on 11th October 1944 during a bombing mission near Verona in Italy and is buried at the British Military Cemetery, Padua, Italy.
My memories of V.E.day are of listening to the neighbours cheering as the church bells rang out for the first time since the war. I recall standing in the crowd at the pavement edge to watch the Brass Band march pst our house playing 'Land of Hope and Glory' and 'There'll always be an England'.
Inside the houses the women were busy preparing for the street party. Tea was laid out in the street where trestle tables covered with white sheets wobbled under mounds of meat paste sandwiches. There were iced buns and home made slab cake, plenty for everyone.Huge pots of tea already milked and sugared, were carried outside along with fizzy pop for the children. Baby's high chairs were brought outside and someone wheeled a piano out from one of the houses.
The grown ups waltzed around the tables while the children played hide and seek in and out of the open doorways and under the makeshift tablecloths. After tea there was organized games for the children and the celebrations went on until darkness fell and people began to drift back into the houses.Sleepy children were put to bed and the furniture restored to its rightful place.
Although rationing was to stay with us for some time, we children were looking forward to seeing the sweet shop window full of chocolate and sweets again. This happened in 1949 but the public went mad buying everything in sight so rationing was re-imposed in July of the same year and didn't end till February 1953.
By the end of the war, one hundred and fifty nine people had been killed in South Shields and there were seven hundred and thirty seven casualties.

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