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This story has been added to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People's War website on behalf of C Hawkins bu Helen Jubb with her permission.

I was born in 1929 and lived in an end-terrace house on the outskirts of Leeds until my marriage in 1951.

The house was 4 storeys; it had 2 cellars, a living room and a front room which was ‘kept for best,’ 2 bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor and 2 attics up in the roof. The lavatory was outside in a brick-built annexe to the house. I had one brother and one sister older than myself and our maternal grandmother lived with us. My brother slept in one attic bedroom and my sister and I in the other, as my Granny had one bedroom on the first floor and my parents the other.

I was just over 10 years old when World War II was declared and can vividly remember looking out of the window on that morning on September 3rd, fully expecting to see German tanks coming up the road at the end of our street!

The air raids began almost immediately after the declaration of war and every house and building had to be blacked out so that no lights shone that could be seen from the sky. Every window which didn’t have heavy curtains had a frame made to fit and covered in a special double-textured brown paper with a layer of black paper in the middle. Other windows had brown sticky tape put across a trellis pattern so that if a bomb dropped nearby the window glass would be held together and not shatter.

Sugar bags which were made of thick dark blue paper were suspended over the electric light bulb with string attached to the outer door; then when the door was opened at night, the bag came down over the light bulb covering it and so no light shone through the door.

Older men and men who worked in ‘reserved occupations’- making munitions, engineering, mining and transport became Air Raid wardens. These people were in fire-fighting and First Aid in case of any bombing.

I had passed my scholarship to Cockburn High School where my sister already attended and was very proud to be going in a new uniform. It was rather a strict school and we had quite a lot of homework most nights. We had to ‘do our bit’ for the war effort and had to use pencil in our rough books before copying up in our best books, then when the rough books were full, we had to rub everything out and use them over again.

We had quite a few new teachers as some were called up to do the National Service in the Army, the Navy or the Air Force.

Any of the girls at school who could knit were encouraged to knit gloves, mittens, scarves or balaclavas for the men in the Forces and the wool was provided. I remember knitting gloves and mittens.

We were also invited to design and paint a slogan for wartime and I won a prize for mine; this was a roundel- three rings, blue, red and white and the centre had the face of Adolf Hitler and the slogan was, ‘This is our target for tonight.’ Everyone was issued with an Identity Card and a Ration Book. Almost everything was rationed. We were allowed each week: 1 egg, 2oz tea, 2oz butter, 2oz cheese, 2oz sugar and 2 rashers of bacon. Other items were bought if you had the coupons- biscuits, bread, flour, cocoa, jam, meat and sausages.

Clothes and shoes were also on coupons which meant that we had to make them last a long time. I wore a lot of clothes passed on from my sister and we had to ‘make do and mend.’ New clothes were made from old ones, dresses were made from curtains and it was no disgrace to wear clothing with patches and well-darned socks or stockings.

My sister and I knitted and sewed and I remember we knitted jumpers out of tiny balls of darning wool, using about 40 of them for one jumper because these were not on coupons and the real knitting wool was. We also used to pull out old jumpers and re-knit them using other colours in a Fair Isle design.

The cellars in our house were down a flight of stone steps and one cellar was reinforced with big steel girders put across the roof. Under the steps was a larder and during air raids when the sirens went, we all had to go down and sit under the steps until All Clear siren went. The first siren was a wailing sound which went up and down in tone for several minutes and the All Clear siren was just a single continuous tone. Then we could all go back to bed.

One night German planes came over Leeds bombing the Munitions factories and railways and I remember one night my father, who was on duty as an Air Raid Warden that night came to take us to a house which overlooked the city of Leeds. There had been lots of bombs dropped and the whole of the city seemed to be ablaze. It was a frightening sight.

That same night, some incendiary bombs were dropped up the road from our house and hit a gas main. My sister’s friend who lived on that street had been in bed as some people refused to go into shelters, and her bed was covered in glass from the broken windows.

We were host that night to a few families whose homes had been damaged by the blast.

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