大象传媒

We were at war! Mr Chamberlain had said so. I hadn't heard it on the wireless that Sunday morning, 3rd September, 1939. I had been at Sunday School; but Lil had met me outside Mount Zion Methodist Chapel on North Road, Clowne, and had told me, and hurried me home.
Lil was my big sister - well, one of my sisters actually. I had eight older sisters, and one brother - 'Our Stan'. Lil had come home from her job in service in Sheffield because the family she worked for were going to their other home in Scotland - 'for the duration'- and our Dad said it was too far for Lil to be away from home at such a time.
I had had my eleventh birthday in August. Usually there were five of us living at home, but Ruby, the sister next in age to me, was on holiday on another sister's farm. 'Our Stan' worked down the pit like our Dad, and lived at home with us.
As soon as Sunday dinner was over Dad told Lil she must paint our names on the cardboard boxes that held our gas masks. The only paint she could find was 'Humbrol' black enamel, left over from doing up her bike on her half-day off. Soon five gas mask boxes were lined up to dry, with :- MUM, DAD, STAN, LIL and PEARL written in gleaming black capitals on the appropriate box, for easy identification - and for all the world to see.
Our house was in a row of twelve semidetached houses opposite a very big cornfield. The men of these households had decided that if war came, and Hitler did the same to us as he had just done to Poland - 'rained down bombs on them'as the papers had said - then the safest place to be would be the cornfield. They had all agreed that when the air-raid siren sounded everyone would make for the cornfield. The bit now firmly between her teeth after her efforts at caligraphy, Lil persuaded 'Our Stan' to help her in making the gap in the hedge,leading down into the cornfield, wide enough for speedy access; and to make sure no one would trip over the roots of the hawthorn she put down an old piece of stair carpet. Finally, she put the gas masks back into the relevant boxes and lined them up on a small table in the hall, at the foot of the stairs.
The next job was to check the blackouts yet again. For more than a week, Dad, with with help from 'Our Stan', had been busy constructing sturdy wooden frames - measured to the last 'thou'- to fit all the downstairs windows. These were then covered in two layers of very thick black paper, so that when placed up to the windows not the smallest pin-prick of light would be seen, thus thwarting the enemy. I have a feeling this was the local Air Raid Warden; a'jumped up little nobody' according to our Dad. Mum had lined the curtains of all the upstairs windows with thick black material. These now were more than adequate as Dad had removed the bulbs from all the light fittings in all the bedrooms, and had replaced the bulbs in the bathroom and the landing lights with bulbs of the lowest possible watts.
The day before, Saturday 2nd September, the five of us had waited until the night was pitch-black before Dad had tried out the shutters once more. This was way past my normal bed-time, but I was needed to help in searching out any tiny glimmer of light that might have defied my father's efforts. We had been mightily relieved to report that we could see not one speck; but we sensed that Dad was not utterly convinced. So on Sunday afternoon,the first day of war, 'Our Stan' had the bright idea that if we couldn't see light shinig out, then we ought not to see light shining in, so instead of waiting for darkness we could put up the shutters and draw the upstairs cutains now. At first Dad was reluctant to test this theory -it wasn't his. Mum and Lil said they thought 'Our Stan's' idea was brilliant, and so Dad agreed to try it out. We'd test the upstairs curtains first.
Upstairs we all trooped and drew all the curtains and agreed there wasn't the smallest chink of light coming in. What none of us had noticed, was that the cat, curious as ever, had followed us upstairs to see why we were all going to bed at this unearthly hour. Of course, it had to be Dad who tripped over her. We quickly drew back the curtains, and very chastened, we filed downstairs. Dad made sure that the cat had been put outside before he and 'Our Stan' put up the wooden shutters, and then we all tested 'Our Stan's' theory again, going from room to room, until Dad was quite satisfied the Air Raid Warden would not be knocking on our door, or shouting 'Put that light out'. Then Dad had us all rehearse putting up the wooden shutters. "There will be times," he said, "when I won't be here to do them, so you'd better learn, here and now, to get it right."
When he was satisfied that we could handle the job the shutters were put into the hall. Little did we know then that it would be almost six more years before we could abandon this nightly ritual. Mum made a pot of tea and we all settled down to more of Sandy Macpherson at the 大象传媒 organ, evacuated I believe, to 'Somewhere in Wales', and awaited our fate.
In the early hours of Monday morning Lil shook me awake. "Come on love, we must get up, the siren has just gone." No time to get dressed; just my shoes, and my coat over my nightdress. Dad and 'Our Stan' had pulled on their trousers and Dad had gone across the road, leaving 'Our Stan' to shepherd Mum, Lil and me to where he'd be waiting to help us down into the cornfield.
Mum had decided a while ago that if we had air raids, then the black fur coat passed on to her some years before by her wealthy half-sister, our 'Rich Auntie Ethel', who had married a 'Master Baker', not a miner like our Dad, would be just the thing to wear over her nightie if she must go into that field. A year or two before, in a fit of patriotic zeal, 'cos she was a fervant Royalist, she had chopped off a largish piece from the hem of this coat to make a Princess Marina pill-box hat like that worn by the Greek Princess at the time of her engagement to the then Duke of Kent - the father of the present Duke. This hat, set at a rather rakish angle, completed Mum's air raid ensemble, her white tennis shoes matching her beautiful silver hair. She was fifty-four at the time.
There were three gas masks left on the hall table. As we were forbidden to put on a light, and had forgotten in our panic in which order the boxes had been placed, Mum, Lil and I grabbed the first one to hand, and 'Our Stan' led us across the road.
Dad was waiting at the bottom of the slope into the field and helped me down first, then turned to help Mum and let out a startled yelp. "Good God Florrie! I thought it was a damn great bear coming down on me!" Not only was my mother swathed in the shiny black fur coat - with matching hat - she'd now added the gas mask as the finishing touch. Well, she'd tried to get it on, but it wasn't a good fit, and when she breathed out it made the most dreadful ribald noises. It turned out later that she had my gas mask. In fact not one of us had our own.
Safely into the field Dad was transformed into the corporal he had been in the LDV in the First World War. We were COMMANDED, in his best parade-ground voice, to "SPREAD OUT".
"I'm not letting go of our Pearl's hand," said Mum. "She's shaking like a leaf."
It wasn't the thought of Hitler's Luftwaffe that terrified me, but what might be running,or crawling, or hopping round my feet. I'd always had a horror of rats, mice, frogs, and any other creepy crawly creatures.
"Harry," called my mother, after while. "I don't see anyone else out here."
"No," called my father across the waving corn, "and I don't suppose you will. They'll all be down the bottom of the field, by the wood. You'll all have to be a lot quicker off the mark in future - if we survive this night."
Just then the 'All Clear' sounded. It had been a false alarm.
We made our way back throught the shoulder- high wheat, like swimmers breasting the waves. As we reached the gap in the hedge we could make out the figures of some thirty or so men, women and children standing by our front gate - our neighbours. Not one of them had been into the field. They'd had second thoughts, they said. "What would Mr Fairbairn think when he saw most of his wheat flattened, just as it was ready for harvesting?"
We never went into the cornfield again. Lil picked up the tell-tale piece of carpet, and she and 'Our Stan' did their best to repair the gap in the hedge. Dad decided it might be safer to push the big heavy pine table into the alcove by the fireplace, and to put a mattress on top, and another underneath, each night before going off to the pit on the night shift. Mum, Ruby and I - and Lil, until she found a new job in sevice, away from home, would sit beneath the table when the siren sounded, wedged in with the dog and the cat, and the budgie and the canary in their separate cages. Keeping the cat away from the birds took one's mind off the crump of the bombs and the rattling of the window panes as Sheffield felt the might of Goering's Luftwaffe. 'Our Stan'refused to join us. He'd never leave his bed until five-o-clock each morning, when he got ready to go to the pit on the day shift. September the 4th had been his 24th birthday.
At Christmas Lil took pity on me, having to carry my gas mask everywhere with PEARL painted on the box in black enamel capitals, and bought me a pseudo-leather gas mask case. She, Mum, Dad and 'Our Stan'had wasted no time in purchasing cases to cover theirs. Ruby had escaped the ignominy as she had had her gas mask with her on the farm at the time of Lil's efforts with paint and brush. I had been told 'not to be a silly girl,as no one would notice my name on mine.' Oh how wrong they were.
In my old age I often ponder on the reason why my father, and others, thought that Goering and his Luftwaffe would seek out our little mining village, and pin-point that row of twelve houses, when Sheffield was only twelve miles away.

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