大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lisa Barker on behalf of Mary Durkin and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

At St. Cuthbert鈥檚 School we had air-raid practices, at fairly regular intervals. The shelters were just across the road, where Broad Street is now. They seemed to be moulded out of soil. We had practices where we would go into the shelters, equipped with our gas masks. The teacher would take the register and we would wait until it was time to go.

We were very lucky really up here in Carlisle, compared to Coventry, London and Liverpool. When we lived in South George Street, the air raid siren went off. There was only the three of us there then, as mam was working in the pub. Dad woke us up and brought us downstairs and sat us underneath the big wooden table in the middle of the room until we got the all clear. It seemed like ages. I can remember dad opening the door to have a look outside, but we couldn鈥檛 see anything as everything had to be blacked out.

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