大象传媒

The war was on, we had a rough introduction on the Sunday when as the declaration was made, the Siren's went and all us kids ended up in a dark cupboard with wet towels over our heads. We all thought war was hell as we screamed to be out. (see The Day War Broke Out Researcher 241911)
Monday came and we went to school as usual but were told to go home and stay there until called back. War was great, we got extra school holidays and as it was a warm Autumn we played our games feeling free and happy.
The Soldiers moved out of the Drill Hall at the bottom of the village and up into the fields round the top of the village. We kids watched them dig fox holes on a bank overlooking the Billingham Beck and the track that led to the ICI. They put up tents and had a cookhouse that we kids haunted for fried bread or sausage stew sitting on the edge of the fox holes talking to the soldiers.
They let us handle the rifles and showed us how they would stop tanks with this drain pipe thing they called a Blacker Bombard, it was all new and exciting. Dad was working all hours with his truck as the Military buildings Air raid shelters and Aerodromes expanded. I often went with him and saw the planes arriving and the Pilot's practicing they were Wellingtons two engined bombers also Hurricanes, they were fighter planes and I thought they looked beautiful having been used to seeing Double winged planes with open cockpits called Hawker Furies. The days took on a bustle as the works employed people who had not had jobs for a long time.
We combed the hedges for berries and fruit to bottle or make into jam as Mother was determined to lay down a food supply having been through the first world war.
I had to feed the animals with Mum when Dad could not get home and that meant washing bags of potato's boiling them in a big boiler then storing them for the rest of the week. We mixed the potato with fresh vegetables and corn meal with Lemon Curd, the waste from Pumfrey's jam factory plus cakes the waste from Spark's Factory. That was for the pigs goats and sometimes the geese, the hens and rabbits got corn meal with fresh vegetable plus grit for the egg shells. Now and again I put a couple of lumps of coal in for the pigs, they crunched it up and swallowed it Dad said for the minerals in the coal.
Dad started to dig a big hole in the garden for a Shelter with me helping plus a couple of chaps we knew. Huge beams of wood and corrugated sheets for walls and roof then all the excavated soil back on top. A sand bagged tunnel with a bend in it for blast and to stop light shining out plus electricity for the light and to make a cup of tea and that was it. Beds were built and food stored in there we were ready for anything. The soil on top became the salad and herb patch nothing was wasted, Mum having worked as cook to a very cosmopolitan household used herbs a lot with her cooking. Grandma would say Mum was acting the high and mighty lady with her fancy cooking and more so when she put one of her Italian style meals on the table. Mum and I loved them, Dad and my Sister called it foriegn muck, that did not stop Mum though.
Big gun pits were dug half a mile up the Junction Road and 4.7 inch guns installed, they were opposite the ammunition dump on Junction Road with its underground bunkers for high explosive. The first time those guns fired I needed clean trousers, the noise was horrendous and we heard the shells humming over the house on their journey into Tees Bay.
Barrage Ballons arrived with mobile Bofers guns
that fired shells like a machine gun. The Green sprouted Smoke Screen Generators, black boxes with tall chimneys that sat there looking deadly. I never saw them fired up but Dad said they would do us more harm than the Germans ever would.
Then came the bad news, we had to start going to school again. Half went on a morning the other half in the afternoon changing over week by week until the Air raid Shelters had been built. So our holday season was over and we settled into the Phoney war that was going to be over by Christmas. We kids listened to the news each night hoping for something to happen but nothing much was going on at all, the odd Siren then all clear as German planes probed the coastal area, we settled into a routine again as the picture houses reopened and life seemed not to have changed too much up to and after that first Christmas.
My Sister and I got presents we had the Goose with all the trimmings and the vegetables from our own garden as we always had at Christmas, with the home cured ham and bacon. We had the bottled fruit home made Jams, our own and wine from Aunt Mabel who made her own Elderberry Rhubarb and other fruits. All our extended family arrived over the Christmas period and we visited still using the car as it had not been banned yet. It was as if the war was not happening. Like every one else we were lulled into a false sense of nothing much having changed but boy were we all in for a shock and as for the war over at Christmas we saw another five after that one and our lives changed irrevocably.
More later.
Frank Mee Researcher 241911

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