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I started school on my fifth birthday in 1941 and my mother must have been very glad since I had plagued the life out of her during the last year or two being bored at home and absolutely dying to get to school. However after only a week I went down with a fairly mild dose of whooping cough and so there was no more school until the new term began in September when to my disgust I was put back into the ‘baby class’. I had thought I would be ‘put up’ despite only having the one week and I was very miffed. There were between forty-eight and fifty-two children in my class all the way up that school and all the teachers were women except for one man who I think must have been invalided out of the forces during the war. We were strictly controlled and sat still at our desks most of the time reciting tables, writing, doing sums and reading. Every week on a certain day our gas masks, which we had to carry at all times, were inspected by the teacher. We had to put them on and they had a sort of rubbery smell which I can still recall. Most of the children carried their gas masks in cardboard boxes with a string to hang over one shoulder but mine came in a proper black case made of some kind of imitation leather. Once I swapped the case for a friend’s cardboard box because I wanted to be like everyone else but mother made me exchange it back much to my chagrin.

Every now and then the air raid siren would sound and we would by ushered in neat lines across the playground to the deep shelters. We never knew if there was a real alarm because the teachers always said it was a ‘practice’, but it was a great diversion which most of us enjoyed. We had to climb down a hole on vertical ladders into the dark; a teacher would be at the bottom to direct us to our seats which were slatted wooden benches placed along the walls of narrow passages. Some children were afraid of the dark and would cry and so they sat on teacher’s knee. When we were all down and accounted for on the register, torches were switched off and we sat in the dark. ‘Miss’ organised clapping and singing games until it was time to emerge blinking into daylight again.

On the way home from school we would amuse ourselves by chalking German swastikas on the pavements and then scare ourselves what would happen to us if the police found out what we’d done. By the age of eight or nine some of us really did begin to wonder what would happen if the Germans invaded and we longed for the war to be over provided that we won.

The parents of one of my friends were fond of going to the cinema in the village and on several occasions they took me. Pathe News was full of war news of course and put me off going to the pictures for years. Aeroplanes seemed to fly right out of the screen at us and I can still remember seeing film of heaps of bodies piled up in a war zone somewhere. Nightmares began to invade my sleep, usually the same thing. I’d be in a field and a shadow would appear round me, aeroplane shaped. I’d begin to run and the shadow would loom larger and larger as the aeroplane came lower and lower over me until I was running in the dark. I always woke up just before it landed on top of me.

We used to listen to the radio at home and laugh at Tommy Handley in ITMA and at other comedy programmes. I don’t remember there being a theatre in Chesterfield during the war but pantomimes were produced at the Lyceum in Sheffield and we were taken there occasionally after Christmas. It was always. ‘providing there’s no bombing’ and I remember worrying wether or not we’d be able to go. When we did travel to Sheffield we walked first to catch a bus and then went by a local train which stopped at all the intermediate stations. The station name boards had been removed but Dad always knew where we were because he’d done the journey so often. Once or twice later on in the war we went to Sheffield to shop. The city had been very badly blitzed so there were many bombed out buildings and they were all black anyway from years of industrial smoke and grime. I remember shopping in Coles, a prefabricated building as the actual store had been destroyed.

It wasn’t possible to go on proper holidays during the war so we used to visit my grandmother and her husband who lived in Yorkshire. They had no children but a dog which I loved and whose lead I was allowed to hold in the park. We would visit other relatives and my other godparents who lived in Halifax. These godparents were always childless and when we visited one afternoon during the war there were real bananas in the fruit bowl. I was longing for one but had been brought up never to ask for anything in other people’s homes and remember on the way back afterwards telling my parents that I thought my auntie was mean because she didn’t offer me a banana. When I did taste one after the war the disappointment was huge.

I seem to have returned to food but of course it was of great importance during the war. We were exhorted to be frugal and make the most of what was available and so that’s what we did. After the war it was several years before rationing ended completely and each time something came ‘off the ration’ there was much rejoicing. The actual ending of the war in Europe was celebrated by street parties. We lived on a long road and had our street party in a field and great fun it was too!

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