- Contributed byÌý
- Tyneside
- People in story:Ìý
- Denis Jackson
- Location of story:Ìý
- Whitley Bay. Northumberland,
- Article ID:Ìý
- A2314063
- Contributed on:Ìý
- 19 February 2004
The Raids
(Night raids on the Tyne. 1942)
We lived in the shelters and listened for the sirens,
And sleep was a stranger to our eyes.
Our nights were broken by the constant bombings,
As the searchlights probed our overhead skies.
We’d leave our homes at the call of the sirens,
And hurry through streets that were drowned by their sound.
Their rising wails would penetrate the darkness,
As we’d run down the steps to the shelters underground.
Below those stairs amid the noise and the voices,
Lay a world within a world of anxiety and fear.
Faces were pale and tired eyes were sleepless,
From those long cold nights when the bombs fell near.
Double-tiered bunks stood in rows down the centre,
And benches were placed round the dirty grey walls.
Light from the bulbs that hung from the ceilings,
Cast long swaying shadows on the floors and the walls.
We each had our place in the rooms of the shelter,
And the benches or bunks were reserved every night.
Names were given to their various locations,
Which avoided the arguments, or the occasional fight.
Children brought toys, or prams with their dollies,
And their parents brought blankets and flasks of hot tea.
But oft were the times when the people brought nothing,
When the warnings were short and they’d had to flee.
Grey and thick was the air from the constant smoking,
As women sat knitting and cards were being played.
Children ran loose or played with their mothers,
Or tried to sleep quietly till the end of the raid.
But cold was the wind that blew down the stairways,
As we sat huddled in blankets unable to sleep.
Tense were the faces as we all sat together,
Though some would tell jokes they’d heard in the week.
Many made friends in those bleak stark surroundings,
And shared what they'd brought among those who were there.
Sweets as there were, were offered in friendship,
To the children who cried or to those in despair.
At the top of the stairs stood the wardens on duty,
With their helmets and chin-straps and mugs of hot tea,
Watching the searchlights as they criss-crossed the heavens,
And searched for the bombers that came in from the sea.
They beamed into the darkness to search for the bombers,
As their dark frightening forms flew on to our town.
The drone of their engines would grow nearer and nearer,
Before their cargoes of death rained down and down.
Whistling, tumbling and spinning on downwards,
Those instruments of terror fell out of the sky.
Released from the bomb-bays by the press of buttons,
They fell on the houses and a school nearby.
Below in the shelters we heard the explosions,
As we lay in our bunks in the faltering grey light.
Children were screaming and their mothers were crying,
As death rained upon us in the midst of the night.
The ground and the walls shook round and about us,
And a choking red dust blew down those stairs.
The lights went out and we were plunged into darkness,
As the town was lit by the lights of the flares.
The noise of the guns boomed high over the roof tops.
As the bombers turned for home at the edge of the sea.
Some were brought down and crashed onto the houses,
And many were the bodies they found in the debris.
We’d wait for the sirens to sound the ‘all clear’,
Then carry our belongings into the smoky night air.
Amidst the fires and the craters we’d stumble on homewards,
To houses and buildings we prayed were still there.
Those whose homes were safe and still standing,
Gave shelter to those whose homes were now gone.
Blankets and bedding, some food and some clothing,
Were given to those, who now had none.
Well into the night and the following morning,
The fires were fought that raged all around.
But life went on amid the chaos and destruction,
After the raid that occurred on that north-east town.
The targets were the factories and shipping at anchor,
The boats and the ships that we built on the Tyne.
But many a bomb fell on the houses and buildings,
Of a small coastal town that had once been mine.
Memories from childhood of a night raid in 1942 on Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear.
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