大象传媒

FATHER:COLLIERY MANAGER
MOTHER:HOUSEWIFE
BROTHER:ROYAL NAVY
SISTER:PIT CANTEEN
MYSELF:GRAMMAR SCHOOL
SISTER:INFANT SCHOOL

Prior to joining the Royal Navy my brother joined the L.D.V.-Local Defence Volunteers (Look, Duck and Vanish!) - Home Guard, which was formed at the colliery. Consisting of miners, he learned Morse and signalling and consequently he was a signaller in the Royal Navy.
My sister went to work in the pit canteen, which was erected for the wartime years to feed the miners and Bevin boys and also the outcrop workers. My Aunt and Uncle took a young Scottish man (an outcropper) in as a lodger, and a hostel was built for the Bevin boys (still standing today).
In my last year at Infant school (1939/40)we should have gone to the swimming baths but this was cancelled due to lack of transport. We had to practise going in to the air raid shelter, in twos.
I started at Grammar school in the September of 1939. I was there until the end of the war. During that time a lot of teachers were called up and therefore we had a lot of replacements. I guess everyone tried their best! Obviously foreign camps were out of the question, so we had 'harvest' camps. I went to Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, by train, and was given 'raspberry picking'. So we were all doing our bit towards the war effort, agricultural wise, and a great time was had by all.I can only remember going the once, but these camps were all through the war, whether there were different locations I couldn't say. we still had school uniform, supplied at Rawcliffe's Outfitters in Leeds (with clothing coupons in 1951 of course) so clothes were worn to grow into! My Gaberdine raincoat was practically ankle length, and it lasted all my school years. I wasn't the only one; there wouldn't be the coupons to keep buying clothes that just fitted.
You had to carry your gas mask at all times, plenty of air raid shelter practice, lots of make do and mend (most of my clothes were remade from my mothers), we walked to school and back on most days (2 miles each way). There was a school special bus, but that was a mile walk. My brother and sister had a bike, but I never did, probably due to the war.
Another Aunt and Uncle of mine took in a boy evacuee, along with lots of other families in Stanley. Unfortunately I do not know any more details.
Home Life: naturally we missed by brother. He was only 17 1/2 /18 years years old when he went into the Royal Navy. His ship was sunk whilst on the Russian convoys, he survived and came home on survivors leave, but we didn't know anything about it until after the war. I wrote to him as often as a schoolgirl would, and had a couple of salor penpals from one of his ships when I was in my teens.
Leaflets were distributed about aircraft silhouettes for recognition, enemy as well as allies. These were stuck on the wall in the garage were we could see them at all times. I knew them all, every night we used to turn the light off and stand in the doorway and watch the hundreds of bombers going on their raids and recognise them. My cousin's husband was one of the bomber pilots, the sight and sound was awesome. On the kitchen wall we had a very large map of the world and every night we would all sit around the table in silence and listen to the none o'clock news ( after Big Ben had struck nine) and follow the action on the map. We knew every capitol of every country and also their national anthem.
Every Saturday morning a friend and I used to go to town for our mother with ration books and queue. Maybe we would get an egg, then on to another shop and queue again, maybe a link of sausage, and then another shop and queue for maybe a cake (as dry as old sticks), maybe nothing. We were told which shops to go to, it took all morning but we didn't mind, I guess we felt grown up, and better still, away from mother's eagle eye! Another friend of mine, her mother was a nurse at Pinderfields Hospital situated between my home and Wakefield (renowned for its burns unit), we both used to spend our weekends with her on the ward she was designated to, the leg ward. Prefabricated huts were erected at the rear of the hospital for the influx of wounded service personnel (still in use)It became an Emergency Hospital, plenty of men in royal blue jackets ad trousers, white shirts and red ties (uniform of the wounded). We did lots of jobs to help out the nurses, like making tea, going around with the tea trolley, rolling bandages, talking to the men and reading to them, writing their letters, chatting etc. They were like our big brother;they certainly treated us like their kid sisters! Do this, get me that etc. and we would jump. Loving every minute, bearing in mind, these men came from all over, some were allies, not many could have family visits as they were too far away. Transport wasn't all that frequent, at the end of one of the visits, one of the wives came to me and thanked me for being there, she said it helped both her and her husband to know that there was someone like my friend and I around, obviously as a girl I wouldn't understand fully until I was a lot older the heartache on both sides. Sadly she died not long after, when I think about it they wouldn't be very old. Maybe twenty plus! Some were very ill and some, brandishing their crutches as they tried to speed up and down the ward, going to the local pub, returning back to the ward late, over the limit, in the dark bumping into the table in the middle of the ward, not quietly vocally or physically! We would hear about it the next day. As life is, it could be sad, also very amusing.
It was certainly an era of children should be seen and not heard, speak when you are spoken to, and not until, not told anything and one daren't question. Very hard for the youth of today to understand.
School leaving age was fourteen, and to work, so that enabled you to go out. Being grammar school, leaving age was sixteen, so at the latter end I was able to go to dances (we learnt ballroom and old time at school). Walking home took one hour, in the black out, the door would be unlocked but everyone in bed.
Sweets were on ration, and each month my mother would ask me if I preferred the money so as to let my dad have my ration. I took the cash; naturally I would be offered a sweet now and again.
Our milkman had a small dairy farm about five minutes away from my home; he had a land girl and a young German POW. I often went after school, I learnt to milk a cow, and stayed for tea, as the farmers wife was a gentle lady and said the land girl and the prisoner of war needed some young company. They delivered the milk in churns with a pony and trap and they ladled the milk into our enamel white jugs, edged with blue.
I lived in a large house, being the manager's house, practically in the pit yard so my dad and sister didn't have far to work. It was detached and surrounded by rhubarb fields and sheds (our area was known as the rhubarb triangle) I often went and drove the tractor with the farmer sitting with me until he could trust me on my own, I would be about fourteen then.
Decoration in the interior of the house was all painted, no wallpaper, easy to wipe clean. For a change we used to get a colour wash (distemper), dip a sponge into it, squuze it, then dapple and stipple all over the walls, making quite an effective pattern. Mother used to make clipping rugs out of old materials. She was very good at feeding us all, a very good manager, it must have been difficult. I used to love grated carrot sandwiches for my tea, very moist. She certainly made sure that my dad didn't go without;as his working days were very long, going underground to check on the men at work, then back in the evening for paperwork in his office. He was a very fair man, his first concern was his working men and then that the coal output was as it should be. We always had a coal fire and cooked by coal oven, toasted bread at the end of a toasting fork in front of the fire, best toast ever! Blackout must have been a headache, as we had a lot of windows, the one on the stairs was huge.I guess it would be a joiner from the pit who made the framework and stuck on the blackout material making a shutter, which we could put up at night, and take down next morning. We used our cellar as the shelter, so when the siren went, that's were we would go, the window was shielded outside with a lot of sandbags. There was a searchlight unit based on Hungate Lane, Scholey Hill, Methley, a mile down the road, and when that was switched on it was better than any moonlight. It was situated near a place called Methley, and the villagers affectionately called it 'Methley Moon'.
We didn't have any iron railings or pans to offer for salvage for the war effort, and our windows never had sticky brown strips to stop them for shattering.
My brother met and married a Belfast girl who was in the WRNS. None of could travel to Belfast for the wedding owing to the war, it must have been heartbreaking for my parents and he would be without any member of his family.

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