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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Emma Sinclair from The Folkestone School for Girls and has been added to the website on behalf of Arthur Jacobs with his permission and he fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Arthur Jacobs War Time Memories

My name is Arthur Jacobs and when the war broke out I lived in East London, and I was about 4 and a half.
I remember seeing aeroplanes dog fighting up in the air.
I remember being at school when the air sirens used to go off and we had to get down onto the floor as the planes went over.
I can remember a couple of times barrage balloons broke loose and went along knocking people’s chimney’s off.
The military used to take down the unexploded bombs to Hackney Marshes where they would explode them. One time I was there with my dad and something must have gone wrong because I saw my father helping along a soldier with a missing arm and a shattered leg.
Towards the end of the war, the doodlebugs started coming over. From the end of our street we could see ‘Bergers Paint Factory’.They used to put up a red flag when there was a doodlebug coming over. Around us, all of the streets had been bombed out and were in ruins, that was how we could see the paint factory. As kids we used to go around collecting shrapnel from the shells and bombs.
All of the kids used to wait out in the middle of the street, waiting to see if the red flag would go up. The next thing we’d see was a doodlebug coming over and we would hear the engine cut out and then see it dive towards the ground. Then we’d wait to see where the smoke came up and go and see where it landed.
We used to have chickens in the back garden so we weren’t short of eggs during the war. We used to heat the eggs in the oven to make them hatch.
We used to collect newspapers at school to help with the war effort and we used to get a little ticket at the end to show how much we had collected.

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