大象传媒

Early Wartime Memories

I started at the village school when I was four and a half. I was just over five when War broke out. The order of events at that time is unclear. My father joined the RAF during the summer of 1939. He wanted to be a volunteer rather than a conscript.

We were sitting in the 鈥淏abies鈥漣.e. Reception Class, when we all were given gas masks. We were told that we had to carry these at all times. They were in cardboard boxes, which had a cord (?) that went across us. We tried them on. They smelt horrible, a nasty rubbery smell and you could hardly breathe in them. My sister had a black one like me. My brother being two years old had a "Mickey Mouse鈥� one. His was much more fun. It was red and when breathing in it, you could make raspberry noises. When my baby sister was born, my mother was told that if there was gas she was to put the baby in a drawer. Eventually there was this ugly cradle gas mask for the baby.

The first time I knew of air-raid warnings at school, we had to sit in the Infants cloakroom. This was a gloomy, narrow room with a window at the far end. We were told by our teacher to stay away from the windows, because if a bomb dropped, the blast would shatter the glass all over us.

At that time, at home, my mother and other Mums got together and made blackout curtains. Also she was sticking paper crosses on each windowpane against shattering glass. Mum soon got fed up with this and we went back to clear panes. At the beginning, Dad started to dig an air-raid shelter at the top of our garden. He got down about a foot and Mum came up and said she would not go in it. So he filled it in again.

My Granddad dug a shelter and when my sister and I were staying with him and Grandma, we had to get up in the middle of the night and go down these damp steps in the pitch-dark into this hole in the ground. You must not show a light. It was not pleasant.
Our village was only five miles from de Havillands and other aircraft factories, so at the beginning bombs were dropped in our area.

At home, when the first sirens went at night, Mum would usher us under the stairs. Over time, we then went into the hallway (one small window). Later still, she left us all sleeping and lay worrying herself as to which one of us she would grab first if the bombs fell.

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