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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Irene Todd and added to the site with her permission…

I was 13 at the start of the war living with my family in Hetton le Hole. Houghton le Spring, Durham.

We lived in a colliery house as dad was a miner and he was also in the Home Guard as he had served in the Royal Navy.

I had one sister in the ATS and another in the WAAF. My eldest brother was in the Royal Artillery and married during the war and my other brother who was in the RAF also married, in his uniform.

Being close to Sunderland the sirens often sounded and we would go under the stairs or go down the steps into the air raid shelter, which was in the front garden. It was dark down there and you could only see inside it with the help of a torch. I remember sitting and listening to Lord Haw Haw broadcasting propaganda on the radio

I went to school in Eppleton, Mr. Walsh was the headmaster and we had to take our gas masks each day, carrying them in a box over our shoulders. Whilst at school I had a paper round,, earning the princely sum of five shillings a week. I left school at fourteen and a half and went to work in a confectioners shop.

I went to church three times on Sundays, morning, afternoon and night; the vicar’s wife was a Prussian and the vicarage was lit by gas light. A rumour went around that she was leaving light showing through the curtains and mum and dad stopped me going to church. I later married at this church in 1951.

On VE Day there were parties with tables in the streets, which were trimmed up with bunting, following which, I went to the cinemas for the evening.

Coming more up to date my son served with the Royal Green Jackets in the Falklands conflict.

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