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Memories of World War 2

My Mother, Father, Brother Bill and I lived at 185 Stanton Street, Newcastle upon Tyne. It was a two bedroomed downstairs flat with a tiny iron railed garden at the front and a backyard and outside toilet at the rear.

I was born in 1936 and therefore memories are more vivid near the end of the war. However earlier recollections are mainly of domestic scenes: Monday washing, pos tubs, step cleaning, coal men in the back lane trying to get passed the washing and lots of supporting neighbours with lots of children.

Soon after the start of the war I was aware of barrage balloons everywhere and constant air raid warnings. One night the air raid warning sounded and my Dad was on warden duty. Before my Mother could get us to the backyard shelter incendiary bombs were falling everywhere and one hit the upstairs flat. My mother tried to get us into the backyard but our upstairs’ neighbours had thrown a burning settee out of the window onto our shelter so we had to run to the front of the house. I remember seeing our ceiling beginning to collapse in the shape of a huge balloon. We ran into the street and there was fire everywhere. We were taken across the road to another house and into their shelter. Strangely enough what I remember most as we were rushed across the street was not just the number of fires but that one lady had jumped over one and her nightie had caught fire, yet everyone seemed to think it funny.

After that we moved in with an Aunt who lived in Winlaton Mill a village in Co Durham. We stayed there for 6 months while our flat was repaired. Meanwhile my Dad was called up into the RAF.

When we returned to Stanton Street a lot had changed. There were hardly any men left in the Street, lots of shops were closed and they had pulled down our iron railings outside the house to make tanks or so they said.

I went to Westgate Hill School and I remember the Head Teacher, Miss Swan, who was very strict. The main punishment for talking in class or in corridors was for the woman teacher to raise your short trouser leg and smack your thigh. A combination of rough cloth and cold weather produced a painful walk home. We all took gas masks to school and I hated the gas mask drill because I could not breathe properly in mine and it also fogged up. However air raids were much better because they interrupted class and you sang songs in the school yard air raid shelter although it was always cold and dark. I was very sad when some of the older children in the street were evacuated. This left a huge age gap. Sunday mornings were always memorable because the fathers who were left put on their home guard uniforms and went on manoeuvres. I remember the laughter of the mothers as they marched away. I was told that they were always drunk when they came back.

I remember one incident when coming from school. The air raid siren was wailing and we could hear aircraft close by. We (I cannot remember who I was with) had just reached Stanhope Street so we took shelter in J Smiths bicycle shop entrance which was quite deep. The actual shop was shut because the owners had been called up. Aircraft sounded very near and then suddenly the whole surface of Stanhope Street seemed to erupt as bullets tore up the street. I don’t remember any fear. We just waited for the all clear. When I got home to tell my Mother what had happened, she was too furious to listen. I thought at first that the coalman had come down the back lane and marked the washing but that wasn’t it, the machine gun bullets had strafed the back lane and her washing, including her knickers, were torn to shreds.

I remember the sweet shop (Risdales) at the bottom of the Street. It had no sweets but just seemed to sell coloured water at a penny a glass and single cigarettes. I remember though the adverts for chocolate etc but I could not remember what they tasted like.

The sky was always full of balloons. One came down and deflated, it wrapped itself around a house at the top of the Street and the lady couldn’t get out. Sometimes during air raids we sat in our backyard shelter with a curtain over the entrance, the ground trembled as the big gun from the Fenham Barracks at the end of the Street was firing. We just sat in the candle light and my Mother would entertain us with conjuring tricks. Sometimes you got very cold if the raid lasted a long time.

I remember that my Father had been taken ill and he came home for Christmas. We visited a relative of ours who had a farm near Haltwhistle in Northumberland. I remember seeing all the Italian prisoners of war who were working on the farm. The only prisoners of war I had seen before were some who were working on the roads in Stanhope Street and they seemed very surly and I was a bit afraid of them. However the Italians were so cheerful. I remember on the train home I told a lady that my Dad had two dead rabbits wrapped up in newspaper. My Dad went mad with me; apparently it was against the emergency laws. My brother Bill pulled the window down and got soot in his eye. This saved me for a while from further punishment.
I don’t remember any hatred against the Germans, everything was just as it had always been as far as I was concerned. Going out at night in the pitch black with a hooded torch seemed natural.

Avoiding walking heavily in the centre of the room in case you fractured the gas mantel in the flat below was normal. Blocking off all light from the house and shelter was indeed commonsense.

Unfortunately my father became seriously ill and was in hospital at Northolt, so my mother decided that we would move to my Aunt’s house in Harrow so that my mother could be near the hospital. The air raids were even worse but what seemed daft was that my Aunt’s shelter was just a cage under the table. We would listen for the doodlebugs (flying bombs). You could hear them approach and then suddenly the engine would stop and you would wait for the explosion. One night we waited and the explosion seemed very near. When we got up to go to school the next day half of the houses in my Aunt’s street were just rubble. I was in tears because my foreign stamp shop had disappeared. We stayed in Harrow for 6 months and my Dad slowly got better. I remember when we arrived back home in Newcastle we had to walk for nearly a mile to find someone who would let us use a telephone so that we could speak to the hospital.

Towards the end of the war I became aware of the radio and newspapers and was influenced by the propaganda. I felt and tasted a bar of chocolate for the first time in memory when an American lady brought one into school. Some would not eat it because it was so precious. She told us about life in America and for the first time I felt some bitterness. Sweet shops suddenly began selling sweets of all things and I became an expert on coupon allocation. After VE day I enjoyed all of the street parties and witnessed many Dads coming home. We already knew who wouldn’t.

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