大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Odilia Roberts from the Derby Action Team on behalf of Sylvia Townley and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My first memory of the war was just before it broke out. I was 5 years old, in hospital in Cheltenham recovering from an operation for a mastoid. We were allowed visitors only twice a week, the rest of the time when we were fit enough to walk about we gathered at the full length windows to look for our parents who would come and stand outside the railings, seemingly far below us, waving and blowing kisses.

One day all this changed, lots of noise as the railings were removed and instead of our loved ones, platoons of men, young and old, marching up and down, shouldering an assortment of brooms and sticks being drilled and shouted at by a man in a uniform.

Returning home we prepared to receive evacuees from London. I was very excited because at that time I was an only child and thought it would be good to have someone to share my room with. It didn鈥檛 happen, all building work stopped and my father, a master plasterer, was without a job. He wanted to join up right away and was very cross when told he was too old, for he had been told he was too young for the First World War.

We had to leave Cheltenham and return to Derby to live with my grandmother in the house I was born in at Chester Green. It was she who came to collect me, get me out of the way of packing and closing up. Nearing Derby, I was astonished to see what I thought was a cow sailing in the sky and asked if that was the cow that had jumped over the moon. Everyone on the bus laughed, thinking it funny. It turned out to be my first encounter with a barrage balloon. I soon became very familiar with them, as there was one at Chester Green, operated by both men and women in uniform. It was fenced around with barbed wire and very long grass, which we as children playing commandos, used to crawl under. We were often found and reprimanded and once I paid dearly for it, I knelt on a sharp piece of coke that cut deep into the flesh of my leg, right up to the shinbone. I was hauled to the Children鈥檚 Hospital in North Street. Limping up the footpath, I dare not cry or whimper as there was no sympathy for the pain I was in, 鈥渋t was all my own fault.鈥�

It was always exciting watching the grey balloon being inflated and sent aloft and once there was a spectacular fire in the sky when it was struck by lightening in a summer storm.

Chester Green had most of its railings, posts and ornamental chains taken away for ammunitions. The Green was dug up round the circumference and huge shelters built. I thought them dreadful places, cold, dark and smelly. I only went in them on practice runs from St Paul鈥檚 School. When a real air raid sounded during the day, I ran home to St Paul's Road, which overlooked the Green and was nearer than the public shelters. However they were turfed over and made super hills to roll down and dens to play in. They almost disappeared in autumn when all the leaves came down. The American G I 鈥榮 waited for the girls to pour out of the factory and then did their courting and canoodling on the slopes. I鈥檓 ashamed to say that we spied on them when we could, shouting, 鈥済ot any gum chum?鈥� One boy who pestered them most was threatened with being dunked in the static water tank.

Most homes had their own shelters. For those with no gardens there were indoor ones like a huge wire cage with a thick tabletop. We had an Anderson shelter. Neighbours came together to help dig out the garden and erect the corrugated shelter and then cover it up with the earth. Many people turned them into rockeries. I wondered what the German air force would make of this nation of rockery lovers. Although I wasn鈥檛 allowed on ours we used to play 鈥楰ing of the Castle鈥� on a friends across the Green.

On a hot summers day wire bunk beds were delivered and as they were stacked up in the yard I threaded leaves and flowers through them, believing them to be a trellis. They were soon installed and mum and grandma made mattresses and knitted and crafted blankets and quilts, dad placed boards over the floor and walls to help keep out the cold and separate us from the condensation. I helped cut up lengths of material from old coats which we pegged into clean sacks to cover the floor and I also pasted cut out pictures of Snow White to the walls above my top bunk bed and thought it looked lovely. We had a stove and store cupboard with provisions - tin food, candles and matches. We had warm siren suits to wear when we went down the shelter, mine was green, and they were miniature versions of those Winston Churchill wore. Every late afternoon flasks and sandwiches were prepared and placed ready to grab on the way out, when the siren sounded.

I have vivid memories of a night with a brilliant full moon, what we called a 鈥榖ombers moon,鈥� being woken and told to hurry up. I looked out of the window to see the three boys next door staggering down the garden path, tripping over their trousers which they were trying to pull on, with their bare bottoms shining in the moonlight (no wonder its called mooning).

The only fear I had in the shelter was that I might be the only one left alive to look after my new baby sister.
We had been issued with gas masks 鈥� I can still smell them. Mine was a Mickey Mouse one, but for babies it was a sort of cocoon with a window. Air had to be pumped into them. I checked up to see how everyone was every night, my mother with the baby, grandmother and an old lady who came round with her portmanteau containing all her papers, money and jewellery. Her shelter was filled water. I worried in case I was not strong enough to pump the air in to keep the baby alive. I practised until I had to be restrained. I was so relieved when she was old enough to go into the Mickey Mouse mask and by then I was in a grown up one.

My father, who was in the Home Guard and when not on duty, would sometimes be with us in the shelter drinking cocoa but mostly he stood at the top of the steps. He gave us a running commentary of the lighting up of the sky when Coventry was burning.
The only time we didn鈥檛 go down the shelter was the night the ammunitions factory was bombed. I had been taken out of school that day to attend my sister鈥檚 christening at the Methodist Chapel next to the school, I think it was a Wednesday as that was the day the ladies had their 鈥淏right Hour鈥� and the christening took place as part of it. We had visitors at home, my sister was still in her christening robe. My father was standing at the front door when the bomb dropped, the blast picked him up, wrapped him in the hall carpet and hurled him through the living room door. He came to rest under a small table with a bowl of nuts on his head. Everyone was speechless and motionless in the dust and debris. I felt something was called for and stood in front of him and repeated what I鈥檇 heard so often, 鈥渘ever mind dad, now you鈥檝e been through it, it will never be so bad again.鈥� The look I received was the equivalent to the tone of voice used by Mr Mainwaring 鈥淪tupid Boy.鈥�
Thankfully the factory was empty except for the night watchman. It had just been converted to make ammunition and was to open the next day. Most of the machinery was blown out into the River Derwent and so the houses around the Green were spared. When the factory was repaired we never saw the ammunition, but there were endless lorries filled with shining curls of waste metal.

The road became shiny and smooth and was ideal for us children to roller skate on. Most of us only had one skate. We sped up and down scooting along; I think we were the forerunners of the skateboard.

At school we had posters of aircraft, which we had to learn to identify. We had to keep the sand buckets free of litter in case we had to put out incendiary bombs.

My father who had been drafted to work at Derby Cables and when not at work was totally engaged with the Home Guard. He had a real rifle and taught the recruits how to shoot and unarmed combat. He also insisted on us learning to use an air rifle at home. The target was painted on the coalhouse door at the bottom of the garden. He received a petrol ration because he had to drive the VIPs, visiting generals and such like. All my friends thought it was wonderful to go in a car but I only yearned for a bicycle.

My mother worked shifts in a weaving factory making webbing parachutes. She was always so gifted and artistic as she produced wonderful clothes out of old ones, the blackout curtains she made were all embroidered with flowers and butterflies. She created birthday and Christmas gifts and a magical cake, with real icing, for my ninth birthday. We would sometimes take two bus rides to a farm in Shelton Lock to get cream and eggs, the latter we would 鈥榩ut down鈥� in IZAL GLASS 鈥� some gooey mixture in a bucket that preserved the eggs, the bucket was then placed in the dark and cold under the stairs.

Every now and then we received gift parcels from America and Canada, chocolate powder and faded dresses from people used to lots of sunshine that took the colour right out the material. That really impressed me.

My grandmother took care of us when mum was at work and she was very involved with chapel where she played the piano and organ 鈥� 3 times a day on Sundays but she would also play and sing in the concerts that were staged in the school hall. She was in the WRVS and we were all roped in to act as casualties so that they could practice their first aid and would go with them to collect the cups and plates at a refreshment centre just off the Market Place in Derby where the forces on leave went for respite. I remember it being difficult to see through the thick haze of cigarette smoke.

We made new friends with the children who came from London and learnt about Doodle Bugs 鈥� flying bombs.

Summers and winters came and went, I never did get a bike but I learnt to ride one on the smooth road. It was a 鈥榮it up and beg鈥� that the insurance lady came on. She let me have a go whilst having a cup of tea with my mother and grandmother.

We gathered wild flowers in the spring and summer, blackberries and rosehips in the autumn and it snowed in the winter. At Christmas we got out the old artificial tree 鈥� no lights, made paper chains and I learnt to knit and to iron, being considered old enough now to handle the irons on the fire without getting burnt. The old lady who came to the shelter always produced some small Victorian artefact to put on the tree such as a bunch of glass grapes or wax fruit.

The war was gradually turning in our favour and I actually began listening to the news bulletins. I remember the look of incredibility on my grandmother鈥檚 face as I ran across the Green to meet her, excitedly telling her 鈥渨e have guerrillas fighting for us now, so I don鈥檛 suppose it will be long before other animals join in.鈥�

Towards the end of the war there were Italian prisoners of war on Mansfield Road. We would peer through the planks to get a glimpse of them. They seemed a cheerful lot and were obviously delighted to see children but we always ran away when we knew we had been spotted.

I was 12 years old when the war ended. We joined with the older boys and girls who were pouring into town, masses of people hugging and kissing, no blackout, everyone delirious with relief and excitement. A golden moment separating us for a short time from the dark days of continuing rationing, doing without, make do and mend and the awful winter of 1947 still to come.

That鈥檚 another story.

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