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WAR IS DECLARED

Early in 1939, sewing and gardening were curtailed at our school, and replaced with gas mask drill. Talk of war had been around for some time and now war was imminent. Civilian gas masks were issued to us in a cube-shaped cardboard box with a lid. The box was cardboard colour. The gas mask boxes had string to hang around the neck. These had to be carried with you when you went out, say to school, work or an event.

The masks were made of greenish coloured rubber that had a signature smell of their own. The gas masks were shaped like a pig’s face with a snout-bit which contained a piece of charcoal. A viewing window in the form of a celluloid panel at the front enabled you to look out. That was the theory, but the celluloid got steamed up after a couple of breaths and you couldn’t see a darned thing. If you managed a breath or two before it steamed up you saw your snout-like piece jutting in front of your face. The charcoal in it was the difference between life or death. Thankfully we never had to put it to the test. Most of us liked our gas mask drill. It amused us. Our muffled schoolgirl laughter mingled comically with the snorting sounds made by escaping air as we breathed out. If you were claustrophobic you were glad when the gas mask drill was over.

War was officially declared on Sunday 3rd September 1939. It ruined a gloriously sunny day. The two Dennison boys, whose father was one of our Police constables, and whose mother made them wear cloth leggings all the year round because they were delicate children, were at our house with their mother, when Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, broke the news to the nation over the wireless. John and Robert Dennison thought they would have to put their gas masks on immediately and leave them on until the war ended!

Blackout regulations meant we all had to hang thick dark curtains. They had to be drawn fully after dark to exclude every vestige of light. Penalties for allowing any light were heavy. Besides, it was no use Mrs Jones having a perfect blackout if Mrs Smith opposite had a chink of light showing. I lay in bed at night, terrified, listening to the unmistakable drone of German aircraft. The ‘Gerrys’ had an intermittent telltale break in engine sound. We didn’t have many neighbours who might be careless with their blackout regulations. But it only needed one! On a fearful night after the air raid warning had sounded, when I think the destination was Crewe, where the Rolls Royce factory was, and whose railway station was a vital target too, I lay awake listening to the tell-tale drone of enemy planes.

Although living in the heart of the country, we were sandwiched between Crewe and Coventry. Both towns had thriving industries and were red-hot enemy targets. As we lived in the flight path of both Coventry and Crewe, any German bombers turning tail from either target and needing to lighten their bomb loads could do so on us.

They did seem to have done that one night, just before we went to bed. A jettisoned bomb landed with a horrific noise so close that our tin bath was shaken from the kitchen wall. There was a deafening noise as it hit the stone floor, and somersaulted to a halt with a resounding crash against the opposite wall.

After this incident the air raid sirens wailed, putting the cart before the horse really, but no one could be blamed for that.

During daylight we could see the barrage balloons over Crewe from our area, and one day we saw a bomb dropped on the Rolls Royce factory there. It was a daylight raid, on a Sunday I think. We were out walking and saw and heard what we thought was a bomb over Crewe, and when we got home we heard on the wireless the news that the Rolls Royce factory had been hit.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by June Woodhouse of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Joan Thomas and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

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