大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of Mrs. P Sapey with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

To my age group, I think the war made us grow up quicker than we would normally have done. One of my own complaints or one of my favourite moans, has always been the war robbed me of my teenage. Even with the best will in the world, there is no way you could say that Newton's was a hot spot. True we had a cinema. The Metro and a local dance hall, really it was the church hall, 3 pubs The New Inn, the George and Dragon and the Robin Hood, although that was in Old Blackwell Villiage, and that was it.

The War started at 11.00am on Sunday 3rd Sept 1939, It was Mum's birthday. At 11.00am there was a news bulletin, an announcement by PM Neville Chamberlain, that because Germany had not withdrawn its forces from Poland, we were now at War with Hitler. About 5 minutes after the announcement, the Air Raid Siren went off. Wheather it was just for practice or not it definately had a lasting effect on our household, coming so soon after the announcement. We all expected death and destruction to rain down from the sky and to be dead before we had sunday dinner. The only person in the house not affected by the War was young brother Alan. When the sirens sounded, he shot upstairs to collect what to him was his most treasured posessions and he dropped the box containing them, they scattered everywhere and the all clear sounded before he could gather them up. 'What were they?' you might ask, that made him risk the whole might of the Luftwaffe?, why they were his set of cigarette cards, definately more important than being bombed. That was all the excitement of that first memorable day.
In 1939, that was the year 8 of us from Newton Council School passed the exam to go to Tupton Hall School, but through the local school, a message came to say that the commencement day had been changed from Monday 11th Sept and instead we were to start on Monday 2nd Oct. However, the boys all had to attend school in old clothes, preferrably overalls, to help with school protection. I and about 200 other boys aged 11 - 17, were all put to work, putting sticky tape on the windows, of which there were many and when that was complete, we had to fill asndbags millions of them. At least that's what it seemed like, blast walls of sandbags were built outside all the windows which stretched from the floor level - 12ft high. We stacked the bags 8ft high x 4ft thick and the panes of glass above that height were criss crossed with sticky tape into about 3 squares. 4 times more than the lower windows. While we were doing this gans of men were digging slit trenches zig-zagging across beautiful lawns, as temporary protection against blast in case of air Raids, over the next 2 years these trenches were replaced by proper brick and concrete shelters collectively capable of holding 400 pupils and staff.
The lawns and a lot of the park land belonging to the school were ploughed up and set with food crops. Where the land was open, huge concrete or steel posts were set in the ground to stop gliders from landing, as the Germans had used to land troops in Crete and Greece, and so our new school went to War.
The curriculum was also altered, from day one when we started we had to learn first and the girls quite often had to take part in exercises to use feild kitchens to feed the whole of the school under the eyes of the kitchen staff. The crops we set were the whole schools responsibility, from sowing to harvesting, and were done in addition to normal lessons. Some idea of the size of land available can be grasped, when we still had 4 football pitches, 2 huge cricket pitches, both largers than the one in Queen's Park in Chesterfield, 2 full size and 2 x 3/4 size hockey pitches, tennis courts - grass and hard court and only 50% of the available acreage was ploughed. The rest was turned over to grazing by local farmers, the pitch areas being protected by post and wire fences. For the first two years of the War, lessons would be interrupted without warning and everyone had less than 5 minutes to get undercover - despite all our rehersals and practices, none of it was put to proper use for the duration of the War except the day, when Morton Colliery, one of the villages we passed through on our way to school, kicking incendiary bombs to the sides of the road and covering them with sandbags - piles of which were stacked by the roadside on all roads lading to the colliery.
We did a roaring trade in souvenier tale fins, for a day or two after.
So life continued during school days for 6 years. When we were at home, we all had to do something for the war effort. Scrap metal and waste paper were collected regularily all during the War, we scoured roads and lanes, collecting every single peice of metal we could find. The Air Force needed alluminium for fighters and bombers, and if you gave up your prized taps and kettles you got steel utility type pans which had to surfice.
We set ourelves targets to raise money by collecting 1 mile of pennies for a Spitfire. These cost about 5500.00 each, a lot of money 65 years ago. That was 25 miles of pennies, at 220/0/0d per mile and although we never ever bought one for the village we contributed quite a number of miles worth.
Everyone working or at school turned out to provide unpaid help to farmers at harvest time, although, we did get paid a small amount if we went potao picking. Nothing was wasted, rags bottles and bones, everything went to the War effort and no-one ever moaned. Our family didn't excape unscathed , Reg was killed by the Japs in Malaya, and others of the 1st Battalion Leicester Regiment, returned from P.O.W. camps at the end of the War after being treated attrociously by the enemy. My eldest brother lost his legs in an Air-Raid on the Forth Bridge where he was stationed on Anti-Aircraft Guns defending the bridge with the Sherwood Forresters. The blast walls were demolished and he and two Dutch soldiers who came across with the Dunkirk withdrawl were buried in an air pocket under the rubble for 3 days before they were eventually found, all three lost limbs.
My sister joined the A.T.S. and served on range finding for the A.A. defences, during the heavy raids on Southampton and Portsmouth docks.
Along with a lot of my friends we joined the A.R.P. as runners, not that we did a lot, but after heavy raids on Sheffield, we went to help the men, not by doing any work, our job was to keep them fed and watered from mobile canteens set up by the W.V.S., the women cooked and helped to bandage, we ran messages and carried Tea-Urns and food to whoever needed it. But these times when anything happened were few and far between. The night skies when clear showed groups of German bombers going about their business and we cheered ourselves hoarse when we saw an odd one which hadn't escaped the attention of A.A. guns or a night fighter.
The Black Out was a nuisance, especially when on trips to Mansfield or Chesterfield, you didn't know whether or not you were on the right bus to come home.
At times during the war we had week-end vistors to feed. We had Canadians from Hardwick Park, we had a czech crewmen. I still remember his name Emil Skala, he only had about a dozen words of English. We had Yank, who when they came to Sunday tea they were so very generous with their gifts of tinned meat and fruit, and sometimes cigaretts which my dad really appreciated. All of them joined in with whatever we were doing, especially working in the allotment garden. I think it was just a lovely break for them to be with a family occasionally when they were so far away from their own.
I remember there was great excitement, when the L.N.E.R. station at Tibshelf, which was on the main line between Notts and Sheffield was deemed to be important enough to have its own anti-aircraft gun, and two swivel mounted multiple machine guns. I think the crews spent more time giving the local children round a bout rides on the gun mounts than they ever did in active service. I'm certain they were never fired in anger and after a stay of about 18 months they moved to the south coast in preparation for D Day.
I suppose really, we had a very quiet War, I hope that what we did in our spare time or what we were made to do went some little way to helping with the War effort. We did it not because it was expected but because everyone tried to do their bit, and I'm glad that I lived though that period, because it gave us a sense of pride, something that's lacking with today's society where anything you can have, if you've the money, and even if you havn't got the money, you can always go into debt to have it.

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