大象传媒

CHILDREN AT WAR

I was born at Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, the 5th of 7 children. My father was a Lowestoft fisherman, but moved up to Grimsby in the 1920鈥檚. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he like thousands of other fishermen joined the Navy in the Patrol Service. I was 8 years of age and lived with my Mum, 4 sisters and 1 brother. I would class us as poor, but well looked after and a very happy family. We had open coal fires in those days and in the winter evenings we would sit around the hearth and Mum would read stories to us from such books as The Railway Children, Treasure Island, Charles Dickens and such like.

I well remember the first time the air raid siren went off. We had been issued with gas masks, and we all put them on and sat in the pantry waiting to be gassed I suppose. After a while, Mum took hers off and said she couldn鈥檛 smell any gas. The A.R.P. warden knocked on the door and said it all had been a practise raid.

Eventually, Grimsby, like Lowestoft, came under heavy attack from German bombers and we were bombed on a regular basis.

My eldest sister (Ethel) was courting a young man from Sheffield and as they had had very little in the way of air raids, Mum decided we could go to Sheffield to live for a time. How soon this was to change, and eventually Sheffield was to become one of the most blitzed cities in the British Isles. However, off we all went riding in the back of a furniture van along with all our possessions. Rented houses were plentiful in those days. We hadn鈥檛 been there long when the Germans started to bomb Sheffield. My 2 elder sisters found work in the city while the rest of us started in new schools.

I was particularly unhappy there, as I had been put in a class way above my age group and the lessons were completely over my head. I used to open my arithmetic book each morning to be faced with this long division sum; I can remember it to this day, divide 4 digits by 17. I didn鈥檛 have a clue and what is worse Miss Jones never attempted to help me, I was absolutely miserable.

After 8 weeks, with the air raids getting heavier, we packed our furniture again and returned to the coast. We rented a house with a bathroom and a front room; it was 15 shillings and 8 pence a week. Let me see, that鈥檚 about 79p in today鈥檚 money. We were issued with a Morrison indoor shelter; this was a massive steel affair with a solid steel top and heavy mesh on all 4 sides, rather like a steel cage. We had a mattress and bed linen inside.

We were awakened in the night by the air raid siren going off and we would all climb into the shelter and snuggle down as best we could and try to get some sleep.
One night a bomb dropped very close to us breaking all the windows in the house, but worse, it caused the soot to come down the chimney and whooshed into the air raid shelter. What a state we were all in.

Evacuees

By now I was 10 and my brother Ralph 12, with the situation getting worse and worse, Mum agreed for us 2 boys to be evacuated, although she couldn鈥檛 let the girls go. It must have been a heart rendering decision to make.

We were transported into the Lincolnshire countryside, outside Gainsborough. We were billeted in a lovely house, with a schoolmaster and his wife, Mr and Mrs Mawson. It was thought best that Ralph and I should not attend the school where Mr Mawson taught, so we used to walk 3 miles in the opposite direction to a school at Mortan. It was so remote, that in the event of an air raid, which was very rare, the authorities had to notify the school by telephone. The evacuees took turns to man the phone. Looking back I have to say we were treated like royalty.

We had come among these people from the seaside and we could talk about the beach and the sea. I think in a way we were looked up to by the local children. The school teachers (mainly ladies) idolised us, I suppose it was the maternal instinct, as we were separated from our families.

The girls at school had cookery lessons and the results were often served up as school dinners. All I can say about that was, we saw more dinner times than dinners!

Farmers in the area were obviously suffering from a shortage of labour, and were quick to call upon the services of school children. Ralph and I spent several weeks potato picking; we were released from school for this, and earned we enough money to rig ourselves with our new clothes.

When it came to Christmas, we were told we could go home for the holiday, but we were discouraged from doing so. We were told that if we stayed put, we would all be given a special treat, this was to be a trip into Gainsborough to see a pantomime, a shilling (5p) and an orange. We hadn鈥檛 seen an orange for over 2 years. Ralph and I talked it over but decided to go home. As it turned out, when we returned after Christmas we were still taken to the pantomime.

Going home really unsettled us and the family, and knowing how homesick we were Mum decided we would stick the war out together and take whatever came along.

One of the things that happened was, Ralph and I were in our back garden after school, when a German plane came along, flying very low, he was strafing the area with machine gunfire. How we both escaped being injured, I鈥檒l never know.

I remember at this time that our school was so badly damaged that we had to attend another school on a shift basis, alternating with the children from there, mornings 1 week and afternoons the next.

My worst memory of the war was losing my 8 year old sister Pat, in a road accident in 1943. My eldest sister Ethel, having married Ron, her fianc茅 from Sheffield, lived with us and her baby daughter Hazel. One teatime Pat offered to go, with her friend to the local sweet shop for a bar of chocolate for the baby, who was 9 months old. On the way home they had to cross a fairly busy road. A builder鈥檚 lorry, which incidentally was in the town helping to repair the bomb damage, was approaching. Pat鈥檚 friend ran across the road, but Pat hesitated at the kerbside and somehow the wing of the lorry caught her and spun her under the double back wheels. There was never any hope for her, she was carried into our house and laid on the Morrison shelter. She was still clutching the chocolate bar, the ration book, and the change. She was taken to the Grimsby General Hospital. She lived for just 2 days, my Mother stayed with her all the while. During that time Pat never lost consciousness and Mum told us that Pat said she could see a beautiful light, she closed her eyes and slipped away.

Soldiers were billeted in a row of house on Grimsby Road and as the funeral passed by, the troops who were all lined up waiting to go for their dinners stood to attention, I鈥檒l never forget that.

My Mum never got over losing Pat; she always said it was another nail in her coffin. She went out to work, to help the war effort and she became a post lady. I can remember how smart she looked in her uniform, you knew in those days people like postmen and women, and taxi drivers were always smart and tidily dressed. One of the things she could never get used to was delivering the telegrams, which informed people that their husbands or sons had been killed or were missing in action.

I can鈥檛 remember exactly when, but Cleethorpes was on the receiving end of German anti personnel bombs, these were wicked things, dropped with the idea that when people touched them they would explode in their hands.

After the allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, things did begin to improve, there were fewer air raids on Cleethorpes, but the south was still being badly damaged by flying bombs. These were the V1 and V2 pilotless rockets, which Hitler thought could turn the war in Germanys favour even at the later part. The doodle bugs as they were known were launched primary on London, and when they ran out of fuel they simply fell from the sky and exploded. They caused horrendous damage and a great loss of life.

We grew up fast during the war and I was now 13 years old and had a job as a paperboy. Let me make comparisons between being a paperboy then and now. We used to deliver the morning papers before school, and then we had to go back after school and deliver the evening papers. Saturdays we delivered the morning papers, then went round again collecting the money. At tea time we delivered the regular evening papers, and then went back yet again to deliver the special football edition. Four rounds on a Saturday and all for 7 shillings and sixpence a week. (37 1/2p).

As we entered the final stages of the war, Mum and Dad decided that they would like to come back to Lowestoft to live, after it was all over. He was still in the Navy of course; in fact I don鈥檛 think he was demobbed until 1946. I ought to just mention that he was 鈥淢entioned in Despatches鈥� and received an 鈥淥ak Leaf鈥� and certificate signed by the King, for something he did. He wouldn鈥檛 thank me for saying this as he rarely talked about it, and I never did know what that was all about.

Anyway, it was down to Mum to come to Lowestoft and find a house, which she did. It was in Tonning Street, 3 bedrooms, and an attic, which Ralph and I soon claimed as our room, there was no bathroom or indoor toilet, but they bought it for 拢325 freehold. This amounted to 拢100 deposit and 25 shillings a month mortgage with the Halifax Building Society. We used to go with a little yellow book, like a rent book and pay the mortgage in a little back room behind Stebbings Off Licence up the top of Lowestoft High Street. You can鈥檛 believe when you look at the Halifax Building Society today that that was how it was.

Well we moved into Tonning Street in early 1945, and of course we were right back into air raids and the dreadful doodle bugs. I had a few months to do at school and I intended to leave at 14 and get an apprenticeship. I went to Church Road, which is now the Harris School for girls, boys would normally have attended Roman Hill but the sailors were still occupying this school at that time.

The war with Germany ended in May 1945 and after the horror of the atomic bombs the Japanese capitulated in August of that year. I left school and got my apprenticeship as a shipwright. I worked in the Lowestoft Shipyards, building and repairing ships for 35 years and I can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of it.

My three remaining sisters, brother Ralph and I all married. Dad fished from Lowestoft and continued to go to sea right up to the age of 70. A total of 55 years sea going experience including service in two world wars.

My Mum did a bit of office cleaning for some local solicitors and later worked for the Birds Eye food factory. She ended her days in the house in Tonning Street but she never did enjoy the comfort of a bathroom or an indoor toilet again.

Well there you have it, the war for children had its down sides, but it also had its plusses. Mum received regular payments for Dad being in the Navy. Something a fisherman鈥檚 wife could never be sure about. The children who lived throughout the war years were reputedly the healthiest of our generation. Most of us were brought up without the guidance of a father at home, but I have to say that women like my Mum who had to cope with it, should have been awarded medals, because although they had to do it all alone, for several years, I am sure they were proud of what they achieved.

I am certainly proud of what my Mum did for me, and what my Dad did for his country.

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