大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Claire White of 大象传媒 Scotland on behalf of Iris Anne Fellows (nee Hull) and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My earliest wartime memory is clinging to my mother's skirt as gasmasks were delivered, and being very upset because I had been given a plain one instead of the Mickey Mouse type.

My next memory is the funeral of my Uncle Jack who was killed while with the Army in Scotland.

The remainder of my memories are very scattered and fragmented. Some of them are concerned with smells - the smell of the big air raid shelters when we left the classroom to go to the school air raid shelter and, most vividly, the smell of the Anderson shelter in the back garden. The sound I remember most is the sound of the air raid sirens.

As my mother was suffering from breast cancer (she died at home in 1941) we only used the shelter in the early part of the war, and I remember it as being very smelly, dark and cold. One night my father was standing outside the shelter watching the planes and searchlights overhead when he felt something whizz past his head. Next morning he found a piece of shrapnel about five inches long. After Mom became too ill to be moved to the shelter my sister and I used to hide under the dining room table when the raids were on, and my father used to stay upstairs with Mom.

I remember walking to school one morning and seeing the Church at which I had been Christened demolished to just a pile of what looked like giant matchsticks. Nothing was left standing.

Sometimes we went to Birmingham on the bus and I remember seeing all the bombed buildings - particularly the old Market Hall.

My sister, Gwen, was a wonderful cook and managed rations brilliantly. I remember powdered egg and tinned fish called snoek. I used to fetch rations after school when Gwen was at work (she worked in the office of Supreme Laundries). Dad was medically unfit for service. I remember the shopkeeper cutting out coupons from the ration books with large scissors, and watching her weigh tea and sugar into blue paper bags. The sugar ration was very small and Dad couldn't drink tea without sugar so Gwen and I gave up sugar. Although the food was dull, we weren't hungry! I also remember cigarettes being very scarce, and sometimes the shopkeeper sent me home with Turkish cigarettes, which Dad hated, but still smoked. I remember that they had a most peculiar smell.

Sometimes as a treat we went to the fish and chip shop and I remember enjoying something called "Fritters" which were two slices of potato with a very small thin piece of fish in between, dipped in batter and then fried.

During the war Dad would never allow us to go to the cinema so my movie-going started after the war.

I recently met two of my friends from school and we could all remember our identity card numbers.

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