大象传媒

This story was added to the People's War Site by a volunteer from 大象传媒 Newcastle on behalf of Nancy Smart. Nancy Smart fully understands the site's terms and conditions and the story has been added to the site with her permission.

"I was 10-years-old when war was declared on the 3rd September 1939. I lived in a small village called Rawcliffe in West Riding (now East Riding), about 30 miles up river from Hull.

I can remember feeling very scared when we heard the declaration of war on the radio and wondering what was going to happen.

Very soon, food rationing began and we were issued with ration books. The amount of butter, margarine, sugar, cheese and meat we were allowed now seems very small. How the housewives managed i do not know!

Queues would form outide shops in Goole, a small town 4 miles away to get one cake each, or 1 banana. Bananas and oranges were almost unheard of. 13 blackout curtains went up at windows at night to shut out any glimmer of light. There were no street lights and names were removed at railway stations.

Living in a country village we didn't experience the hardship of people living in a town. We were able to catch rabbits and keep hens for meat and eggs. Sometimes we were able to get buttermilk and the odd bit of butter from local farms.

My father kept hens so we were allowed a bit of extra sugar to feed them in the winter. We had apples, pears, cherries and rasberries from the orchards and blackberries from the hedges.

Unfortunately our village was close to Hull and in the middle of a large number of airfields. They were mostly bomber and fighter squadrons. The nearest was at Pollington about 6 miles away and they had Wellington and Lancaster bombers. We knew when they were going on a raid as we could hear the throb of the engines warming up and we could see them taking off and heading out over the north sea.

In the early hours of the morning we could hear some engines spluttering and missing. We could only hope they made it down safely as they returned. We could also see by the glare in the sky that Hull was getting very badly bombed. The whole of the docks were wiped out!

Goole was also hit, as it was a small inland port. The only bombs we had in our village were obviously a mistake. Close to where I lived was a long straight country road. A German obviously mistook it for a runway and dropped a stack of bombs. This blew out the window of my bedroom and blasted glass over my bedroom. Fortunately, that night I had moved into another bedroom!

One thing I didn't like was gasmasks. At school, one day a week, we had to put on our gasmasks and run aroung the village. We didn't like this as it was hard to breathe and the visor kept steaming up. Thank goodness we never had to use them.

We had quite a lot of children evacuated to our village from Hull. I felt really sorry for them as they obviously missed their families. My grandmother had two boys who soon settled in and came back to visit after the war.

My Dad tried to volunteer for the Navy but at 37 was considered too old. He went to work at the army ordanance depot which was a reserved occupation. Still determined to do his bit he became a sergeant in the Home Guard. Unlike "Dad's Army" he had a uniform and a rifle!

We had a quota of German and Italian POWs who came north to work on the farms and did a great job.

Sadly we had our share of young men from the village who didn't come back from the war. Looking back it was amazing how everyone accepted things and helped each other the during the war years."

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