大象传媒

One of my first memories after the war was declared, was my uncle who was at a T.A. camp did nor return home till after his training in the army was completed. We were soon issued with our gas masks, and my brother who was born in 1939, had a long oblong box with a see through lid that you placed the baby in it and had to pump it by hand. The next group had what we called a Mickey Mouse mask with a red floppy nose that the children played with. The older children had the adult gas mask.We had to take them to school every day and if the air raid siren went we had to file out into the school shelters which had a slide to go in, and we sat on long forms lining the shelter.
The most frightening thing to happen in our area of Stockton-on-Tees was the night the German planes dropped their bombs on the next 3 streets , killing the occupants. We were not in our shelter this night but in the understairs, and after a short space of time we heard footsteps coming down our passage and we thought the enemy were coming into our house, but it was only my Grandad coming to help dig us out as he was on ARP duty and had been told our street had been hit. We lived near Ashmores Foundry, Dorman Longs Rolling Mills and the TNT Works, these must have been the target for this raid.
I remember very well seeing queues at corner shops and running home for a ration book not knowing what was on sale, it could have been spam or any other meat, but whatever it was it would be in sandwiches the next day for our Dads bait. If I saw green ration books given in at a shop I knew it was for real eggs not the dried eggs that had to be mixed with water.

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