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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Rebecca, a pupil from Cedars Upper School on behalf of Sheila Garide & has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site's terms & conditions.

We didn’t have a radio, so my parents went next door to listen to the announcement of war on their radio. I can remember waiting outside with my brother, & my parents came out & told us. My father fought in WW1 & had been taken prisoner of war.
We dug an air-raid shelter in our back garden. It smelt of the sand bags which were piled up on the sides. The air-raid siren in my area was on top of the cotton mills. It always went off at the beginning & end of the working day, but if it went off at any other time, you had to go down to the air-raid shelter, but my mum said if you didn’t have time to get there, you should crawl underneath this thick wooden table instead.
I remember the blackouts & putting tape on the windows, & the refuge room.
We all did a lot of ‘make-do-and-mend’ing — you’d see someone in a skirt one day & the next it had been made into a jacket!
I remember growing our own vegetables in our gardens & allotments being rented out to those who didn’t have gardens.
There were a number of foods you couldn’t get during the war that they still advertised anyway to keep them in your memory — Mars Bars & Kiora for example.
People used to exchange food a lot because of the rationing. I used to be given extra sweet coupons from the lady across the road for taking her baby out in the pram. I used to work with someone didn’t like cheese & my mum made very nice apple pies, so he gave us his cheese rations & we gave him apple pies. We had a friend who was a sailor who came home on leave with a whole bunch of bananas for us! We thought this was wonderful.
I think people were a lot more friendly & always helped each other during the war. The men who didn’t join up joined the Home Guard. My dad was in the Home Guard & I think it was quite sociable — they had fun times there. It also helped women’s emancipation — women took over men’s old jobs or joined the Land Army, WRENS, WAAF etc.
When the war ended, we all had a street party. We put tables in the middle of the road & someone made lots of food. We could take down the blackouts & air-raid shelters.
I joined the citezen Advise Bureau (CAB) which helped people find lost relatives & those who’d lost ration books & everything.

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