大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Poeple's war site by Teresa Parsons and has been added to the website on behalf of Peggy Simmons with her permission and she fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was playing with a group of friends where we lived when I was 8 years old when we heard a wailing noise. A man passing said,"You kids get home, this is an air raid." Not knowing what an air-raid was we ran. By this time there were lots of aerolanes. It was frightening because there were so many and noisy. Some houses with gardens had Anderson shelters but we didn't have a garden. So when we got home mother said to get under the table. The windows had brown sticky paper as crosses on them so if they blew in it stopped flying glass.
My mother and I had to put a mat on top of the coal and we spent many nigts sleeping in the coal cupboard. There was a black out where a crack of light was not to be seen, so some of us kids would go round some of the roads shouting "put that light out". We didn't have any bulbs in our bedrooms so light wasn't left on or show thorugh cracks in the curtains.
We went to school but classes were often disrupted several times a day and we spent a lot of time on the boiler room steps. It was decided that the school was a high risk place with lots of children in it so peole were asked to lend a room so that children could still learn. The house I went to had the window left unlatched because the lady worked, so I was lifted onto the window sill to climb through and open the door for the other children.
We were frightened every time the sirens went. The drone of the planes, the 'ack ack' of the guns, watching tracer bullets in the sky were all very scary. We were relieved when the all clear sounded. We grew up quickly but we lived from one air-raid to the next. It seemed never ending.
Food was rationed so I was late for school many times because if a shop had fruit or cakes you had to queue to get a treat.
We had to carry our gas masks with us every where, hoping and praying you never had to wear it.

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