大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Barnsley Archives and Local Studies Department on behalf of Harold slater and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

Dad volunteered with 13 others to go in the army in 1939, he left 5 kids at home. I was 9 at the time.

He used to walk from Doncaster when he came home on leave. He never said a lot about his time in the army. He was in the Pioneer Corps, then the Kings Yorkshire Light Infantry and then was moved into the Parachute Corps when he was 38 years old.

I went to Main Road School. We had clothing coupons and to save as much as we could I had to go to school wearing my sister鈥檚 shoes.

We had air raids nearly every night; sometimes we went in the air raid shelter. The siren was at the end of Broadway. We had to take our gas mask wherever we went. The school had an air raid shelter but at home the shelter we had to use was for four families and it was no good.

A plane crashed at Pogmoor, I saw it on fire. The pilot bailed out but his parachute didn鈥檛 open and he landed on the railway lines.

As lads we didn鈥檛 realise what it was all about. We saw the flashes over Sheffield when the raids were on.

When the war ended we had a street party. We had flags across the road and everyone emptied what they had in the pantry.

We had some very happy and some very bad times; it was interesting. There were two different children at school, those with dads at home and those with dads in the army, they had very different lives.

I worked 6 days a week for 拢2 8s 0d a week, at Dodworth, Rob Royd and the Redbrook until 1985. I started work at 14 years of age; my brothers also worked in the pits. My sister also worked, she went on her bike to Denby Dale.

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