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"This story was submitted to the site by the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with E Smithursts permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

Yes! We lived near Alfreton Railway Station. The war was on and I was just a school girl. Gas masks were taken with you everyday, everywhere. Always a teacher early at school to send you back to fetch it, had it been forgotten. Air raid shelter drill was the order of the day — unexpected at any time, orderly file, quick! quick! quick! down steps, underground, we had to sing loud inside to drown out the noise of doodle bugs, just in case we had to vacate through a man hole cover at the top of the shelter incase the entrance had been blocked. These shelters looked like a large uneven lawn on a playing field, on the outside and cold and dark inside, a few torches were kept there. A house in Ellesmere Avenue had a direct hit with an incendiary bomb and the emergency services moved us away from looking at what they were doing.

Yes! there was a home guard in Alfreton, the one we knew was husband to the District Nurse White of Mansfield Road we used to ask him what LDV on his applet was for, we never did know (he used to say Lotta Dirty Villans). They were a very busy pair, always out on call for something or other. They had a son in the Navy and they lost a son, an air force pilot killed in action, they were family friends, I remember the nurse asking me, just a school girl, if I would go in and wash her dishes up after school, she gave me the key — what a shock! The old copper in the kitchen was piled high with dirty pots and pans and dishes everywhere, they needed to be done, nothing otherwise to do, such was the call for duty, everyone pulled together.

My kid brothers where out at night putting incendiary bombs out when needed. The sirens sounded, noise of doodle bugs and near by locally was Raynes Garage, what a worry that would have been had it been hit. The army lorries queued for petrol , all the way down Mansfield Road, there was so many. The most frightening night of all was hearing planes over head, very dark and seeing someone with a torch in the allotments opposite, shining up into the night sky what appeared to be a Morse code message — we learned afterwards the prisoner who escaped from Swanwick prisoner of war camp had tried to get and make his escape from Alfreton station, but in vain. He made his getaway from Jacksdale on a stolen push bike from somewhere (the one that got away).

School seemed like hard work if one had been up most of the night. Our morning refreshment to take to school was raw carrot, while turnip and suede was taken home - very nice really.

Then the early teenage years, the Bevin Boys came to do their share for the war effort. Lots of huts put up to house them on Nottingham Road next to the Catholic Church and we were allowed to go dancing on Sunday Evening with permission and the Endsor concerts entertained, great fun quite an uplift in the dark days of the blackout. We had sash windows at home and the lights were not put on till the Blackouts were up. The back window blackout was a canopy which used to hang from chains above the high alter of the Catholic Church with the white painted spread out wings of a dove, the holy ghost on a black background so inside at night somehow we felt protected and safe seeing that looking at us and yards of black curtain had to be purchased for the other windows and I remember embroidering large stars in all colours on the one we had in the bay window at the front looked nice. The comradeship of all and everyone was second to none, but I wouldn’t like to think I had to live through that again.

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