大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by C Deane, a volunteer from 大象传媒 Essex Action Desk, on behalf of Kate Cooper and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

War comes to Neston

My name is Kate Cooper. I was born on the 17th July 1926 in Neston, a village on the River Dee in Cheshire.
In 1939 when World War 2 was declared, I was living with my parents,
Hannah-Lilley and Alfred Bamford, and my three sisters and brother in a house called 鈥楬olmwood鈥� in Parkgate Road. I was not to know then that the war would span the whole of my teenage years. But then the title 鈥榯eenager鈥� had not been invented.

I remember listening to the radio that day in September 1939 and wondering what all the fuss was about. My mum was crying and my dad was trying to comfort her. Over the following years, I learnt why mum had cried 鈥� she had known what wars were about. It must have seemed to her such a short time since dad had returned from the Great War and they had been able to marry. He had been gassed and briefly hospitalised before being returned to the trenches. Later he was to suffer shell shock for which there was then no treatment. So, mum had every reason to cry 鈥� the Great War had been 鈥榯he war to end all wars鈥�, and it was happening again.

For the first three years of World War 2, I attended the Girl鈥檚 High School at West Kirby to which I had gained a scholarship from our village primary school. The journey of about ten miles was travelled on a steam train, segregated in the back carriage with a Prefect in each compartment. The first carriage of the train was adapted in a similar fashion for boys travelling to Caldy Grange Grammar School. In between were carriages used by the public. My young brother Tom was to pass a scholarship a few years later and join me on this train, but at the opposite end. We did however get to walk home together from the railway station!
My sisters in their turn went off to different schools and mum had the constant worry on dark evenings of having us all in different places if the air raid siren sounded.

As the war progressed, our lives became increasingly affected by the necessary restrictions imposed on a country at war. One was the 鈥榖lack-out鈥� where every window had to be covered so that not a chink of light could be seen from the sky once darkness fell. Air Raid wardens patrolled the streets, knocking on doors wherever the smallest light could be seen.

Rationing gradually extended to everything we ate, drank or used. Diets were varied by bartering anything that was surplus to requirements. We had bantam hens, so we were able to exchange eggs for fruit from an old lady who lived alone in a little cottage in Mill Street. She always wore a pretty lace mob cap on her head. She would lift the bantams鈥� eggs from our basket and exchange them for apples or raspberries. Mum was an amazing cook and could make a meal from almost anything.
To feed the seven of us, most meals began with a bucket of peeled potatoes! We grew our own so at least they were plentiful.

Even things such as hair combs became scarce. We heard on the grapevine one day, that the chemist had just had a delivery and I was sent to the shop to join the queue. There was no choice. The chemist just handed you a comb from his stock and you paid. The one I proudly took home that day was made from some kind of silver-coloured metal and looked like a dog comb, but it lasted the family for the rest of the war.

Then there were air-raids, which mercifully were not too frequent compared to some parts of the country. Ours, when they came, were usually the result of the German planes jettisoning their loads on the villages on their way back from bombing the docks at Liverpool or Birkenhead.
It was from the Liverpool bunker that the North Atlantic wartime operation was planned and directed. This establishment was the reason for much of the heavy bombing which the area suffered, together with the docks and shipyards.
One night however, a large bomb landed in Parkgate Road where we lived, only yards from our house. It made huge crater in the road, but failed to explode. Within minutes everyone living within range was evacuated. We all left the house in whatever clothing we could snatch and were sent off in different directions to various relatives. Two of my sisters rode together on one bicycle to our Uncle鈥檚 farm out on the marsh. It was pitch dark, but I remember seeing mum and dad heading to elderly relatives in Cross Street, mum carrying the pet budgerigar in its cage!

Another disturbance in the life of our village was the day the evacuees arrived from London. Our house had been designated 鈥渇ully occupied鈥� so we were not expecting a small child to join us. But mum had other ideas! She loved children and when she saw the groups of tired little waifs being taken from street to street she asked if we could have one of them. He was a little boy of about six called Derek Miller. He stayed with us for a long while until the worst of the bombing was over. Then he returned to his mum and baby brother in Middlesex. In later years, he joined the Metropolitan Police. My older sister Margaret still keeps in touch with him.

One of the most profound effects of the continuing war on our lives was the gradual disappearance of the young able-bodied men folk. Lads still at school often became the man of the house, taking on an older man鈥檚 responsibilities. Old men who had dreamed of retirement were now drawn back into useful employment in all walks of life 鈥� management, teaching, farm work and as Air Raid Wardens. It seemed that families now only consisted of grandchildren and grandparents. In some areas young men of call-up age were given the option of going down the coalmines as so-called 鈥淏evin Boys鈥�, so desperate was the requirement for fuel.

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