大象传媒

I remember so very well the start of the war:- On Friday Sept 1st 1945, my sister came through the gate with her friend and said :- Oh there is going to be a war. I am not ashamed to say that I went into hysterics as I remembered my mother telling us of the First World War, the coalman was delivering coal at the time and he said: I have never known such a nervous child! That night I remember that my mother and father took me to town with them (as was their normal Friday night procedure.) I recall walking through the market and saying to them Oh! Will they be coming over to bomb us?!
However on Sunday Sept 3rd 1945 came the words on to the wireless! BRITAIN IS NOW AT WAR, and that was it!!! The next thing that I remember happening was the shutters that my father had made being put on to the windows (do you know I am literally shaking as I am writing this!) and then the Air Raid Shelter being installed in the garden (I really have to get a cup of tea!) - Thats better! Actually when i reminisce I actually relive the event! (ah! ah!) Incidentally my father made a garden covering our shelter it was lovely and pretty. The neighbours informed the Mercury and they came and took a photograph of it, and it was in the Leicester Chronicle. At school I was a Shelter Monitor which meant that I had to put the required things into the shelter and just before going home had to take them from the shelter, I used to serve the milk for the class in Bakelight cups, and then wash them, make the teacher's coffee at breaktime, also take the registers round and collect them and unlock the school gate for visitors. There was no school secretary's at that time!
We used to do a whole lesson with our Gas Masks on. That was awful as one could smell the rubber and it became all sweaty. The sound of the Spitfires was a familiar sound, the search lights a familiar sight, and the shrieking of the sirens, a frightening sound, (although my mother always had a bottle of Tizer and a bar of ration chocolate, which was a dark tasteless thing, but one acquired the taste!!) for us to take down to the shelter! Around 4 AM the all clear would sound and we would emerge from the shelter all stiff and cold to the light of dawn. I then go to school a few hours later.
In 1940 my mother gave birth to my youngest sister during an Air Raid, when my father rang for the Midwife, her husband would not let her come unless my father fetched her and took her home again. It must have been really frightening for my dear mum. My father was an A.R.P. Warden and so could not be with us during Air Raids, but he would pop round to make sure that we were all right!
One particular time that I recall was that:- I was shopping for my mother when the sirens sounded, just as I reached the shop, which was a distance away! A lady said to me:- You must stay here! I said:- Oh! No I am going home, and when I went to run it felt like my legs would not move. When I finally reached home I could not unfasten the gate. I remember that I was so scared, eventually I did, mum was in the shelter with my sister, she opened the door and said:- Where is the shopping? I said:- The siren sounded before I could get it! She said:- Just you go back and get it! Can you wonder that I never forgot that memory. ah! ah! - These are a few of my memories.

'This story was submitted to the People's War site by Sara-Jane Higginbottom of the Leicester CSV Action Desk on behalf of Maisie Mary Tompkins and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

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