大象传媒

The thing I remember most about the war is how everyone came together, everything was about the war everything you did but you had to get by and all your neighbours would help each other. When people lost someone in service it was felt by the whole community and everyone rallied around that person. Some people took in evacuees from London who were avoiding the bombings, kids would arrive at the station tagged up and adults mainly the wealthier ones would come and collect them and take them in.

I was a child in Worksop at the time and although much of the war was frightening we had a lot of fun still. We used to get up to all sorts of mischief, we used to run up to a camp near Worksop where American soldiers were based and exchange goods from them for food like chocolate. One day we went up and the place had been abandoned they had been sent off to France. They were replaced by Italian POW鈥檚, I remember them being marched through the streets all marching with their hands behind their heads, they had all been labelled with green tags.

The raids were the most frightening part of the war the Germans would conduct raids on Sheffield and you never new when the sirens were going to go off. Sometimes though we used to run up to the market and try to watch the planes fly over we found that quite exciting. We had to make our own entertainment at the time sometimes we would go scrumping for apples we could then go and sell them at the cinema, people tried to make money out everything they would sell their rations and their clothing coupons to get extra money. Once I was caught scrumping for apples by a policeman who hit me with a birch, I still think of it when ever I see an apple now.

There was a lot of work to be found during the war if you wanted it, there was always work going on at the mines or the farms, the mines were the best because they paid regularly. My father stayed behind and continued working at the mine, I had one friend who went down there to deliberately avoid going into service. I was at school at the time but these were often closed, they were always closed when the raids were on. I think a lot of intelligent people missed out during the war because they couldn鈥檛 get the education because the schools were closed too much.

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