´óÏó´«Ã½

I remember being with my father listening to the radio when Neville Chamberlain the Prime Minister at that time said that we are now at war with Germany. I think that was Sunday morning September 3rd, 1939. I was seven and a half years old then. Next came the evacuees from Hull. These children arrived in Swineshead by coach and I remember it being a nice sunny day; they came early in September. There were twice as many children in Swineshead now and we only went to school for half days — Swineshead kids mornings and Hull kids in the afternoons.

We now had the blackout. Nobody was allowed to show a chink of light from any house or building. Every window had to have extra blinds or curtains. All vehicles had to have dimmed lights and there were no street lights. It really was dark when there was no moon.

All men and women who had not gone into the military forces had to join some branch of the civil defence such as the Home Guard, ARP, AFS, WVS, ambulance service, police as special constables, the land army or work in munitions factories or coal mines, etc. My father worked on a farm by day but at night was a part time fire watcher. AN older teenage brother became a messenger for the ARP. One of my brothers became a bomber pilot in the RAF. All of these people had uniforms.

Children walked to school with their lunch bag hanging one side and their gas mask hanging on the other. Every child had to have their name and address on them. This was often a cardboard label on a string hanging around your neck.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.