大象传媒

This story was submitted to the 大象传媒 WW2 People's War site by Luke Alexander Thorne of St. Benedict's Catholic High School on behalf of (Mrs A V Thorne) and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My Dear Luke,

I shall try to help you as much as possible with the memories i have of world war 2.

I was born in December 1930, therefore, when war was declared on 3rd September 1939, i was 8 years, 9 months. I can still vividly remember that Sunday morning when Neville Chamberlain our then prime minister, announced at 11 am that we were at war with Germany. The news was expected but we were all very upset and afraid. Not long after the announcement the air-raid sirens sounded. It was an eerie sound and we were all very upset and afraid. My father, your great-grandfather, was very concerned for our safety. He got lots of cushions and piled them on the floor in the corner of our dining room away from the windows. In case of bombs dropping and our being hurt by flying glass. He then got my mother, sister and myself and our two staff into the corner and told us to remain there. We were all crying. We were in business and our living quarters were attached to the business at that time. Our staff (cousins Vera and Peggy) helped my parents on the domestic front and acted as nursemaids to my sister and i because my mother worked in the family business. Vera and Peggy were crying to go home to their families but my father tried to calm them and told them it was best that they remain where they were, until we heard the all clear siren and then they could go home.

I seem to remeber both community shelters and anderson shelters, for people to shelter in their own gardens, were built before the war started because news had been so bad for sometime beforehand. We were also issued with gas masks in advance and we had special cases to carry our gas masks in and had to carry them with us everywhere we went. Children were also evacuated away from town to safer country areas. This deeply upset parents and children. I remember having a sewing lesson in school one afternoon when i was about nine and a half, suddenly there was a thud and clouds of earth went high up in the sky together with hens from a nearby allotment. We were all shocked! Our teacher Miss Luke realising a bomb had missed the school and landed luckily on the school playing field without exploding, told us to get under our desks. The sirens hadn't gone but went after the bomb dropped and we all were rushed into the school shelters. My father at the time was about 3 miles away in his allotment. He saw the clouds of earth going up and had no idea until we arrived home that the bomb had just missed our school and how near we came to being killed.

There were also barrage balloons in various places to protect us from enemy aircraft. These would often break away and float around until our aircraft shot them down. We used to collect shrapnel etc. as souvenirs.

in the summer of 1940, my sister and i had to stay with my grandmother and aunty Mary for some weeks. They were in business in Seaham Harbour about 10 miles from where we lived. Seaham Harbour then had some terrible raids and we were in the anderson shelter most nights. When the sirens went, my aunty Mary used to lift us over the garden fence and hand us to Miss Napier who lived with her elderly father and she used to get her father and us into the shelter before my grandmother and aunty Mary got up the garden path. Some nights we spent hours in the shelter listening to the terrible noise above and wondering what was happening. One night when we came out all the houses on the other side of the road had holes in them. They had been machine gunned. My mother and father could not get us back home quick enough.

When i was about 10 years old my father decided to send my sister and i to school in Sunderland. We were to go to St. Anthony's Convent into Montessori where i would spend a year with my sister, before going into the grammar school in the same grounds. When the sirens went there we were marched along the corridor and into the cellars under the chapel, where we sat with the nuns and said the rosary. we always used to feel safer there and the convent grounds were large and very beautiful.

One night Sunderland Railway Station was bombed, a truck standing in the station was blown through the roof of the station and hurled into Joseph's Sports Shop opposite. Binns department store was beside the station, that was also completely destroyed.

One day we decided to go to Seaburn and walk along the promenade. We weren't allowed on the beaches, barbed wire prevented that. Also the beaches were mined in case of invasion of German troops from sea. It was only on rare occasions we were able to go out at all as petrol was very scarce and rationed and not many people had cars then. We hadn't been at Seaburn for very long when we heard a german plane overhead. They made a different noise to our planes. A low droning sound. We jumped back into the car and headed for home. However, we had to take shelter when the sirens went and gunfire was heard.

When i was about 13 years old i had to go into the Royal Infirmary in Sunderland to have tonsils and adenoids removed, plus some back teeth. On the night that i had had my operation Sunderland was badly bombed. I was not at all well and was up on the fourth floor in the private wing of the infirmary in a two-bedded ward. The girl sharing my room had gone in at the same time as me for the same operation and was about the same age as myself. When the raid started the gunfire and bombs were dropping and although it was night, outside was lit up because the Germans were dropping flares to enable them to find their targets, which was Sunderland shipyard. We were absolutely terrified. The nurse came into our room and put Audrey and i together in the same bed. Our parents came in next day and asked to take us home because we lived away from the town where it was considered to be safer. However, the next few nights were just as bad with flares lighting up the sky. We were all sat in the cupboard under the stairs but suffered no bomb damage.

I forgot to mention my mother bought my sister and i lovely fawn weatherproof fleece lined siren-suits with hoods on. We used to pull these on over our pyjamas when the sirens sounded because there was no time to get dressed.

There were no street lights allowed. All lights had to be very dim with black-out shades on and we had to have black-out material to put under the curtains to keep lights from showing outside. If a light did show we had an air-raid warden knocking at the door. Buses and cars also had very dim shaded lights.

All food was rationed. People kept allotments to grow vegetables, we also kept hens for eggs and chickens to eat. If any bananas or oranges came into fruit shops we had to queue up and have our ration books marked. Sweets were also rationed to about 16 oz a month. If victory-v lozenges came into the shop they were off ration. People used to queue for these. One man bought so many he had to be taken home from work because these sweets were full of chlorodine and made him ill. He ended up in hospital. Clothers were rationed, you needed coupons. I don't know whether or not the same applied to curtain material, but i remember my mother having a pretty pale green curtain material made up into a dress each my for sister and i by a dressmake friend of ours. It was shiny on one side and dull on the other side and she had them made up on the dull side and they were very nice. Shoes also required coupons. Furniture needed dockets and was cheap wood called utility. If you required good furniture that was impossible unless it was second-hand.

London had a lot of doodle-bugs (flying bombs) incendiary bombs were also dropped. The flying bombs made a terrible screaming noise as they came to earth. The poor people in London spent most of their nights huddled in the tube stations which were used as air-raid shelters. Some of the anderson shelters in peoples gardens were very nicely done out. Church bells were silent, if they were rung during the war it would have meant we had been invaded.

The war years were certainly far from easy, especially in the big cities.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.