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My name is Audrey Roberts. I was born in 1934 in 'Catherine Cookson' country in Jarrow, on the River Tyne. My father was a market gardener and moved around the country with his job. In 1942 we lived in Kirkham, near Blackpool. Dad changed his job and we went to live in Newcastle upon Tyne. We moved to an area called West Jesmond, which is about a mile from the city centre, and therefore close to the docks on the River Tyne.
In the war years, aircraft carriers and submarines were being built on the docks. I know this because my grandfather worked as a ship’s engineer there. Unsurprisingly then, the docks were a prime target for the German bombers, which flew over West Jesmond most nights. West Jesmond is an area of close-built terraced houses.
My first memory is of looking up into the skies and seeing ‘great grey elephants’, commonly known as barrage balloons. My understanding is that the barrage balloons were to stop the bombers coming in too low, because they would then get entangled in the balloons. Barrage balloons were made of silk, and material was in short supply in the war years. If a balloon was shot down during a raid, which they were, people descended with scissors and all the local ladies had grey silk underwear!
I lived in Forsythe Road. The narrow alleys behind the houses were filled with brick air-raid shelters. These were very cold and damp, and not popular. Dad said that if he was going to meet his maker, he would rather do it in the comfort of his own bed, and refused to go when the air-raid siren sounded.
At the bottom of the street was the old-style Victorian school, which catered for children in the district. One of the most popular activities for us children was ‘who could collect the largest piece of shrapnel on the way to school’. The fact that these were pieces of bomb didn’t matter to us.
When the bombers came, heading for the docks, they would start dropping the bombs before reaching their target. Some of those bombs would drop on West Jesmond. One night, Forsythe Road received two hits. Houses directly opposite each other were wiped out.
Quite often, after an air raid, we still went to school the next morning. Back home, windows had been blown out, and crockery smashed. The electricity and gas supplies had been cut off. The nearest source of hot food was the school canteen. I can remember people queuing across the school yard for hot soup. The trouble was, because crockery was in short supply, they clutched vases and ‘gosunders’, anything that would hold hot soup.
The classes at school were large. There were a lot of gaps, because many children had been sent away as evacuees, but there were regular attenders. Further down the row from me was Joe. Joe lived in the posh houses near Jesmond Dene, so I didn’t know him very well, I only knew him in school. One morning, after a raid, there was an empty space where Joe usually sat. No-one mentioned him until later that morning when police came to see the class teacher. Later, she told the class that Joe’s house had been bombed the previous night and Joe’s parents had been killed. Joe himself had been rescued by the air-raid wardens next morning, after hanging by his legs in the ruins all night. I think he lost his legs. I never saw him again.
In February 1944, my mother was very heavily pregnant. I was just 10 years old.
Dad was on Home Guard watch. Mum went into labour in the early hours of the morning. Dad was rushed home. We needed the midwife, but she lived a mile away, and Dad didn’t know where. I did, though, but couldn’t go at 2 in the morning. So Dad and I set out together under the search lights to fetch the midwife. We roused the midwife by chucking stones at her bedroom window, and told her she was needed. On returning home, and opening the front door, a thin reedy cry greeted us, just like a cat crying. Guess what? My young sister, Veronica, had not waited for the midwife, but had already been born. She was named after a popular film star of the time, Veronica Lake.
During the next year, 1945, Dad got a new job in the country, about ten miles out of Newcastle, a place called Ponteland. That’s another story, but I do remember VE and VJ celebration street parties in Ponteland.
Now, over sixty years later, I do wonder why Dad chose to move us from the comparative peace of Lancashire to the mayhem of a city under nightly attack. Maybe it was because his family were living in Newcastle under the Blitz. Could it be that he just wanted to be with them during that dangerous period?

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