大象传媒

I was an impressionable 6.5 year old boy on the 3rd September 1939, happily playing halfway up Washington pit heap, you made your own fun in those days, when a most unearthly undulating wail sounded. I had never heard anything like it before, and the literally terrified me. I scrambled down and ran home as fast as I could go, breathlessly arriving just in time to find my mother and a group of friends solemnly listening to the Prime Minister, Mr Chamberlain announcing on the Redifusion wireless 鈥渁nd that consequently this country is at war with Germany.鈥� The sound which I had heard was the first of many air raid sirens that we would be subjected to during the next 5.5 years. The wireless was switched off and for a long moment no one spoke, my mother then quietly said 鈥渢his war will last for 5 years,鈥� the group quietly dispersed with everyone immersed in their own thoughts.

One man listening with us on the fateful morning was called Michael, he worked in a furniture shop next door to my mother鈥檚 temperance bar in Washington Front Street, and shortly afterwards he joined the Royal Navy and was posted on HMS Hood- we never saw him again鈥�..

With the tension subsiding somewhat in the afternoon, I picked up my empty goldfish bowl by it string handle and headed for the nearby pit pond in the hope of catching some 鈥榯iddlers鈥�. Still swinging the bowl it hit a post, smashing the bottom, impetuous youth that I was, I continued happily swinging until a jagged shard sliced into my right knee and for the second time that day I ran home terrified, this time bleeding profusely. My mother bandaged it up and for a week I suffered until the wound eventually healed up, leaving a scar two inches long which I still have to this day, - a keepsake of the day on which war was declared.

During the time I attended Brandy Row Junior School, but early in 1941 my mother gave up the 鈥渢emperance Bar鈥� and we moved to Biddick Villas, at that time it was the last street in Washington before Fatfield, as a result I transferred to Biddick School in Brady Square where one of my teachers was Mr. Ramshaw. He was on a Royal navy ship which was sunk at Jutland in WW1 and spent over 12 hours in the sea waiting to be rescued, and he always blamed this episode for loosing his hair. Of course, during the war exotic fruits were not available and I remember Mr. Ramshaw once drawing a banana on the blackboard in yellow chalk, showing the skin peeled back, and after a short silence one boy asked 鈥渨hich bit do u eat, the skin or the inside?鈥�

One night while living in Biddick Villas there was an air raid, a German bomber was being chased by an RAF night fighter, I vividly recall seeing in the moonlight a white parachute drifting silently down, we assumed it was a German crew member but it transpired that it was a land mine which fell into a stream in the grounds of Cooks Hall, home to the local steel factory owners. Due to the soft ground the land mine did not explode, a bomb disposal team arrived early next day and experienced a lot of trouble in attempting to defuse it, due to the soft ground. After a couple of days it was finally decided to detonate it where it lay, prior to the explosion the Army came round and told us to open our windows for the blast, it was about 5p.m. in the afternoon when the explosion came, we lived about a quarter of a mile away but when the land mine exploded, I thought the end of the world had come. As soon as we were allowed to, all the local boys and girls went to see the crater, and while looking around I found one of the 鈥渉orns鈥� from the mine which was made of lead, it was much more valuable than the normal pieces of shrapnel. By this time the large crater had filled up with water from the stream which formed a small lake, it eventually became home to various species of aquatic life, dragonflies, kingfishers and other groups of bird life, all fascinating to watch, several of my friends and I built a raft and we used to float from side to side.

We moved to Whitley Bay at the end of the war and on a visit to Washington in the 1960鈥檚 I decided to have a look at 鈥榦ur鈥� pond, to surprise I found that the area was now a housing estate, looking at the houses standing there I wondered if the occupants realised that they were living on top of a wartime land mine crater.

RAF Usworth Aerodrome was located where the Nissan factory now stands, and I clearly recall one morning going by bus with my mother to Sunderland, the bus was halted outside the Aerodrome by a group of soldiers who boarded and everyone had to show their identity cards before being allowed to proceed. While writing this account I recall a more tragic story regarding Usworth Aerodrome. About 1942 a Polish squadron was stationed there. One night a Spitfire had been sent up to intercept some German bombers, in the course of the action the Spitfire was thought to have been damaged and the Polish pilot returned to land at Usworth. The last street in Washington going towards Sunderland was at that time called Havelock Terrace which continued into Elm terrace. At the end of Elm Terrace the road crossed the railway lines then turned 90 degrees left for a short distance then 90 degrees right running alongside Usworth Aerodrome main runway; this resulted in Havelock Terrace being directly in line with the main runway, which was only a short distance further on. No one ever found out what actually happened, but the pilot put the spitfire down in the middle of Havelock terrace, the fighter exploded killing the Polish pilot and damaging a considerable number of houses, but there were no civilians casualties. As far as I was aware it was never established whether the pilot mistook Havelock Terrace for the run way or whether he did not have enough power to reach the Aerodrome, but everyone in Washington regarded him as a hero. There was hardly a boy at school next day because we were all looking for the little bits of the Spitfire as souvenirs.

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