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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Thelma Sharman of the CSV ´óÏó´«Ã½ Coventry and Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of herself and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

TRIPS TO THE DREADED PIG BIN

Germany invaded Poland on my fourth birthday, 31st. August 1939, so I was almost ten by the time of VJ Day on 15th. August 1945. As I was a young child my memories nearly all centre on happenings around my home in the town of Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, a town that was spared any damage apart from a few incendiary bombs.
My father was an Air Raid warden and I was very proud that we were chosen to have a stirrup pump in our porch ready to put out fires- fortunately we never had to use it. Across the road from us was a galvanised dustbin that was known to everyone as the Pig Bin. These were to be found on every street and people were encouraged to put their potato peelings and other food scraps into them to help the war effort by feeding pigs. It was my job to make a daily visit to the Pig bin and I hated it because it smelt so revolting. I don’t think it was ever cleaned out throughout the war.
My school, St. Mary’s, was taken over by the military after Dunkirk and I remember weary soldiers resting in the field at the bottom of our garden after their evacuation from France and giving us children sweets.
Pupils at St.Mary’s were moved into a nearby Secondary School of which my abiding memory is of sitting in long rows either side of a cold dark shelter waiting for the ‘all clear’ to sound.

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