大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Vincent of Age Concern Shropshire Telford & Wrekin on behalf of Ella Henderson and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I lived in a fishing village, Newbigging, in Northumberland, north of the river Tyne.

Our home was bombed in November 1939. I was just about to go out of the door at ten to seven. The siren went and we all stayed indoors except for father who was an air warden. He had to go out and look after the air raid shelter.

We lived near to the railway station. A train had just come in and the driver was stoking the fire, so he had the fire door open. The 2 German planes going over saw the flames. They should have hit Newcastle-on-Tyne, but mistook the river Blyth for the Tyne and dropped 2 bombs. A soldier coming off the train was killed. Another man in the village was killed too. He was going into a sweet shop, possibly for cigarettes, when the shop was bombed.

All our ceilings came down. Mother and I sheltered under the table. During the night I went to my auntie鈥檚 to stay and mother and father went to her sister鈥檚 to stay. We had plenty of relatives in the village.

Next morning the main road was sealed off. We took furniture that was alright to friends at different houses. People were very kind and helped us to move the furniture out. We were out of our own home until after Christmas. We didn鈥檛 spend Christmas at home that year.

I was teaching at that time and the school had been hit from the second bomb, but it had not been destroyed. I was the youngest member of the staff. On the Monday I had various classes for games in the playground whilst all the classrooms were examined to see what damage had been done, but the school was not closed.

At that time, I was going out with a young man from County Durham. He worked for the local council as a builder. Then he was called up. The last leave he had was in 1943 and then he was killed in N Africa. He had been in France and N Africa. I never saw him after that last leave. It was very upsetting. He had been with an Irish regiment.

I was also writing to another friend, Joe and he went out to Cairo, N Africa. He was two years older than me. We had gone to the same school as each other. He had to move with the Pay Corps to Tripoli. I wrote airmail letters to him and I have his letters still.

Joe wrote first, asking if I would write to him. The first letter that I wrote went down on a ship on the way out to him. He had been waiting for that letter. In the end he contacted a friend and that friend came to see me. I explained that I had written. Some of the friend鈥檚 letters seemed to have gone down as well. Joe then suggested that we always number our letters in sequence i.e. 1, 2, 3 etc, in the future.

We kept writing until the end of the war. Joe came home in 1945, a little while after the war had finished. He didn鈥檛 like flying, so he had crossed by ship to France and then made his way back to England. We met at Newcastle-on-Tyne railway station and then went for a cup of tea. It was strange seeing each other again as we were both older by now.

I also wrote to other people. I was the Sunday School secretary and I used to get people together to write to the soldiers. I helped to organise children鈥檚 parties too. Mothers would save up jellies and then make them for the parties. We had pears with the jelly when they were in season. We just had to make do with what we had.

I also knew a lot of fisher people with being a teacher. Sometimes they would give me a fish. I would take the fish into the country to friends who lived on farms and would exchange it for a chicken. So we would have chicken for Christmas.

I was quite busy during the war what with one thing and another.

I had a friend, Ivy Berry. We had been in college together and had kept friends all through the war years. We went walking together until the youth hostels closed down sometime during the war. We stayed friendly until she married. I married Joe in July 1945 and Ivy Berry married a Polish airman in December 1945. We were bridesmaids to each other. In the January she and her husband came to see us and then I never saw her again. She died last Christmas.

Joe and I had 2 sons after the war. After I became a widow I remarried when in my 60s.

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