大象传媒

My Grandad Norman was four and a half at the beginning of the War. He lived in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne with his Mum and Dad. In the War, he was evacuated to a little mining village about 25 miles away from home, with the rest of his class from school. They travelled by a railway which had been closed for the past 30 years but was opened again to transport evacuees (or 'vaccys' as they were called) to their safe country foster homes. They went to stay with a family who ran a grocery shop. The children liked playing with all the products in the shop but the evacuees used to pinch some sugar canes to eat from the shop or slice off a bit of butter from the main slab because nothing was wrapped up, except for a bit of brown paper. They didn't like staying at the grocer's shop though, so they came back after two weeks!

My Grandad's Uncle Doug was a Coldstream Guard in tanks. His job was to fight his way across Europe. When Doug came home on leave, he used to bring back German flags. Doug sometimes brought back German knives, they used to loot German villages and would pick up everyday items as souvenirs. Doug didn't die but, when he was in a tank, his best friend was standing in the turret and he had his head blown off by a bomb.

When the War began, the King announced it on the wireless, and Grandad listened to it on the 11 o' clock news broadcast. Everyone thought the Germans would come straight away, so they ran and hid under the stairs but luckily there was no sign of the Germans until later in the war! In the "phoney" war, the air raid sirens would usually go off at inconvenient times, such as 5pm when people were eating their tea.

My Grandad did witness live bombs being dropped and Grandad's family would run into the street and see big black aeroplanes with white swastikas - little black things were falling from them. These were bombs. They could hear them exploding on the other side of town, so they ran back inside as quick as their legs could carry them and hid under the stairs. They did have an Anderson shelter but it was cold and wet inside. If it was raining, you would be sitting in a pond! In the shelters, he used to suck Horlicks tablets instead of sweets. You were supposed to dissolve them in water and drink them but they tasted just as good when sucked! The children would sleep and, to pass the time, the adults would talk and play cards.

During the War, the chocolate machines in the railway stations were nailed up because there was no chocolate to fill them. Because of rationing, you had to use coupons to buy food and clothes. You exchanged them for some bacon, eggs or a new coat.
It was quite quiet in the war. You could go to the cinema and watch newsreels of updates from Africa or Europe and see how the British troops were getting on.

Grandad enjoyed collecting shrapnel. The children used to collect shrapnel and use it like currency. Some kids used to come in with bits of, what they said, were German helmets, they were just kidding though. Someone once found a little heap of bullets on the ground and another got a little piece of whaleskin. They were from a whaling ship that had come into Newcastle from Russia. One day, they were selling little bits of whaleskin and Grandad bought a piece about 2 square inches across, it was quite hard, leathery, tough and brittle. Unfortunately, his mother threw it away when she was cleaning.

Grandad's biggest fear was of being bombed. Two miles away from where he lived, people were bombed. His Uncle, who lived in London, had neighbours who were bombed, their house disappeared completely with just a big hole left in the morning.

To keep people's spirits up they sang songs and there was a radio show called 'Worker's Playtime' which was recorded in the munitions factories. There was a concert in a canteen every lunchtime. People would listen to it in their free time.

Grandad was never desperate enough to steal or use the Black Market, although he did have an Auntie who used to get stockings from America.

When the War ended, in May 1945, the soldiers came home and everyone had big street parties. You knew what it was all about when the war ended because you'd seen all the bombers dropping bombs and heard gunfire from the Anderson shelters.

There was a General Election and Grandad's Uncle, Norman Dodds, was made a Member of Parliament for the Labour Party. Grandad was named after him. Norman Dodds was the first person in the family to have a car and Grandad went down to London with him in his Ford 'Popular'. It had a sliding roof through which Granded stuck his head to see out of the top of the car. They were driving through the East of London which had been bombed and he could see all the flattened houses and demolished buildings.

When the relatives that had been in the War came home, everyone used to sit around the piano and sing songs. Grandad and his cousins sometimes used to smoke the ends of cigars that his older relatives had thrown away. He used to see a man walking down the street who was about 6 ft tall and was as thin as a lamp post and completely yellow. He had been a POW in Japan for a year and was jaundiced because he only ate rice. He looked like a skeleton, his coat (demob suit) was so baggy that his collar was like a horse's collar. He was a terrible sight but after 6 months he looked fine because he had been eating a proper diet. Grandad was frightened to talk to him because he thought he was a walking skeleton!

Grandad said, "When you are young, you don't really notice the War - it's just an everyday part of life for as long as you can remember."

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