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"This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Barnsley Archives and Local Studies Departmentand Ashleigh Willets and Victoria Tolson from Darton Community school on behalf of Douglas Robinson and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

I was 18 when the war started, living at Staincross Common. We had our own air raid shelter, an Anderson Shelter. There were some bombing in May 1940.

Anthony Eden was Minister for War and he made an appeal on the wireless and a quarter of a million people joined the Local Defence League. The uniform was just an armband. By July it had increased to half a million people.

I was given the rank of Sergeant, then made Company Signalling Sergeant. The map area we covered was Staincross; Notton; Woolley; Woolley Colliery; Haig; Darton and Kexborough. I was in charge of communication, we started out with lamps and flags then we received better wireless. We did night patrols with our neighbours a lot of the time.

We were called out to an unexploded German bomb, which had dropped, we had to go and guard it until they could be made safe by the army the following morning. We stopped people using the lanes and going into the fields. We could see the fins of the bomb sticking out of the hole it had made.

We used to go to the cinema and we had the wireless. We made our own entertainment, particularly at the chapel. (There were 7 chapels in one village.) Youth clubs were available, concerts, football, cricket, tennis. I loved football, sport really helped me get through he war. We also made up games with marbles etc and collected things like cigarette cards for interest, cigarettes were rationed.

We had blackout curtains, no lights could show. It was so black one night I walked into a cow! I jumped over a wall and stumbled and had to feel for things.

I travelled by bike and bus mainly. Public transport was limited in the war.

My Dad owned lorries at Newmiller Dam. Mum was a housewife looking after her five sons, I was the eldest. My brothers went in to the army, one retired as a major. The youngest brother stayed at home.

We got our rations from the Co-op; it’s now a carpet shop. As we were a big family sugar, butter, lard tea and matches were always on the list, but we must have got 40-50 items. The man behind the counter always added everything up in his head and if anything needed to be wrapped it was always done in brown paper and string. We used to give our ‘divi’ number to get our dividend once a year! The butcher’s was next door. We went abit short of food but it wasn’t too bad. A lot of people started gardening to get extra vegetables. We went into Barnsley for clothes. Burtons and Alexander’s for a tailor made suit, go in get measured up and three weeks after your suit was ready.

I married at the end of the war and we had to get ‘dockets’ for the furniture. We had to decide between getting dining room suite or bedroom furniture.

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