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I'm a pupil from Prudhoe Community High School, Northumberland, entering Gladys Vernon Jones's story onto the website, and they fully understand the website terms and conditions of use.

Gladys Patricia Vernon Jones (nee Cartwright) — always called Pat.
She was 10 years old when war broke out on the 3rd September 1939.

She lived with her parents William (Bill) and Gladys Cartwright at 144 St. George’s Rd. Wallasey Cheshire. Her father worked for the Royal Cotton Exchange in Liverpool (known as the Royal Cotton Commission during the war) and her mother was a singer and entertainer, which she had been doing since childhood. During the war the cotton commission were unable to import raw cotton from abroad, but wanted to retain those men working in that field, so offered them a small retainer fee while the war was on. This obviously wasn’t very much so Bill decided to go into the entertainment business with Gladys, as she had the contacts. He wrote and produced variety shows to entertain the forces, hospitals and prisoners on Merseyside — numbering over 3000 shows in all. Bill and Gladys also arranged variety shows to be broadcasted on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ radio in Manchester/Liverpool.

A few weeks after war broke out Pat was sent to Bridgenorth with a friend called Bunty Linacre. They stayed with family friends who owned a farm. They were enrolled into the local village school, which was over 2 miles away, which they happily walked to and fro from no matter what the weather, clutching their daily beef dripping sandwiches — which Pat enjoyed never having had them before. Her lasting memory, however, was the delicious evening meals — which were all from the farm. While there Pat loved working with all the animals and developed a lasting love of animals.

As things seemed to be quieter then anticipated back in Liverpool, Pat went back to Wallasey. Her parents built an air raid shelter in the back garden and she enjoyed helping turn the rest of the garden into vegetable plots — growing potatoes, carrots and onions and Pat remembers her mother growing strawberries!

The government issued gas masks to everyone — to be carried around all of the time. Pat thought they were a laugh, looked very funny — like a stunted elephant and she enjoyed making rude noises with them. She recalls often being sent home from school because she had forgotten her mask.

Pat continued to go to her local school — Wallasey High School (now called Weatherhead High School) but as the war escalated Pat’s parents decided not to send her to Abergavenny in April 1941 with the rest of the school who wanted to be evacuated. Instead they decided to send her to their friends Mr and Mrs Wakley who owned a large garage complex in Northope. She was very homesick there despite enjoying the schooling and learning how to change tyres and getting oily. Mrs Wakley used to take Pat to her friends’ farms where, again, she loved being with the animals. She wrote a postcard home everyday — eventually her parents decided to bring her home.

She carried on at Wallasey High School — until on the 30th August at 10:45pm 3 bombs went through the main roof causing much destruction. Luckily no one was hurt. Pat remembers Mrs Ormrod, the chief constables wife, allowing one of the teachers — a Mrs Britain — and several pupils who lived near by, to use one of the rooms in her house as a classroom. Pat doesn’t remember much work being done but lots of tea breaks with orange squash and biscuits!
The High School was partially repaired and reopened on the 20th July 1943 but not all pupils could be accommodated so Pat spent a time at Oldershaw School in Liscard until the High School was fully opened. She would cycle, with her friends, quite happily the several miles there and back.

During the summer holiday Pat went with some of her classmates for two weeks to Shifnal Harvest Camp — picking the produce — potatoes, carrots, peas and fruit behind the tractor and putting them into sacks. She remembers lots of friends eating more than they were picking — and often being very ill afterwards.

The smell of the oil from the tractor was so overwhelming that Pat stills remembers it to this day.

They slept in huge green army tents — about 6 or 7 people to each tent. Pat remembers waking up each morning and being completely engulfed in ground mist in the tents — the first time, Pat wondered where all her friends had gone and then their heads popped up one by one above the mist!

On this camp Italian Prisoners of War also worked — but not with the girls. They would sit on the haystacks overlooking the girls, wolfwhistling and singing Italian love songs very off key. There was one particular Italian prisoner who was devastatingly handsome and all the girls tried to catch his eye until he gave them a beaming smile one-day and he had no teeth!

One day there was a horrendous storm while the girls had been to the post office, on return they found that all of their tents had been blown down and swept away.

Petrol was of course rationed during the war but Bill was given extra coupons for transporting the artists for the shows. He had a new jaguar car but as it used so much petrol he felt he couldn’t run it so put it up on blocks for the duration of the war and bought an old banger. Pat remembers it having a sliding roof that had numerous holes in it — resulting in them getting very wet when it rained unless they put up an umbrella.

Sometimes they would go to the shows by train. One particular time the air raid sirens went off — so Pat, her mum and dad decided to take shelter in one of the large bank doorways in Liverpool — they were surrounded by sandbags so felt quite safe — when the danger died down they continued their journey home — only to discover the next morning the bank that they had sheltered in had been destroyed sometime after they had left!

When her parents did shows Pat would sit backstage half doing her homework — but having a good look at what was going on. She particularly liked when her mother sang in the hospitals and Pat sat chatting to all the injured men and women. Pat remembers the house constantly being full of musicians and singers who would tinker on the piano or bring their trumpets and accordions with them.

She does not remember ever being frightened during the war or ever being hungry despite the food rationing.

When the war ended in 1945 she remembers her parents going off to celebrate while she and best friend just went out for a long walk and watched all of the fireworks down by the river Mersey.

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