大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Plymouth Library Services on behalf of Maud Morgan. The author fully understands the terms and conditions of the website.

I was seven years old when war was declared. My parents had a hotel and pub in a village in the Yorkshire Dales. I had a brother and sister ten years older than me.

My sister Mary joined the Queen Alexandra's Royal Nursing Service and later went to Singapore before the Japanese took over. My brother joined the Air Force as an Air Gunner and Wireless Operator. While in the Pathfinder Squadron, he was shot down and lost a leg. He survived, although many of his crew were killed.

I was still at the village school, which was two miles out of the village. We walked to school in the mornings, back home for dinner, and back again in the afternoon. No school buses, in fact hardly any buses at all, except on Market Day.

The village had a General Store and Post Office combined, and the church next door to my parent's pub, and that was all. Traders used to come round with horses and carts selling various things, though that stopped during the war.

I remember being marched down from school to our Village Hall to be fitted with a gas mask. This was a horrible experience for children. The masks smelt rubbery and I felt that I couldn't breathe at all. We were told that we had to carry our gas masks in a cardboard box with a strap over the shoulder, and take them everywhere with us, which was a nuisance.

The gas masks were supposed to protect us from poison gas, which may be dropped in the bombs. We didn't get many bombs as there were only farms around, no factories, but all the children in the village used to collect shrapnel when they could find it.

Because we had several bedrooms (six), we were told we had to take in evacuees, three mothers and five children from Sheffield. I quite enjoyed having other children to play with, but it was hard work for my mother, especially with the rationing.

They didn't stay very long, just a few weeks, because they couldn't stand the quiet, no chip shops or cinemas. I remember being upset when the children lost my jar full of coloured marbles, some of which they rolled down the drains.

My brother came home on leave and brought me some chocolate, which was issued to airmen. And once, at Christmas, he brought some oranges. He survived the war, but his fianc茅e, who was a WAAF, was killed in an air raid. He never married. My sister married in Singapore Cathedral, and eventually came home after many adventures.

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