大象传媒

When World War Two began,we were boys in the infants class,learning to form the letters of the alphabet with chalk on slates.We enjoyed a free bottle of milk twice a day,had a nap on little folding cots during the afternnoon and played with bean bags,hoops,tops and whips and cap pistols.The gasmasks which we were handed at Sunday school amused us,resembling the papier mache
Guy Fawkes masks on sale at the corner shop.We carried our gasmasks everywhere,in little cardboard containers around our necks.
The streets of the Staffordshire Potteries were eerie that autumn,the gaslamps remained dark,thick paper blackout blinds masked every window of the houses,although the night sky was illuminated by the glare of the blast furnaces at Shelton Bar steelworks.
Then a practice alarm was sounded on
the air raid sirens and for the first time we heard the rise and fall of the Alert,followed by the steady wail of the All Clear.
Shortly afterwards a stream of lorries toured the terraced streets of Stoke on Trent,delivering Anderson air raid shelters for each family to erect in the backyard.These consisted of curved sheets of corrugated iron,bolted together and sunk into the ground,with the excavated soil piled on top for added protection.Many families placed whitewashed rocks amid the soil,planted with arabis,aubretia and
yellow alyssum,a novel garden feature.
We had a coal cellar under the house where the neighbours would join when the Alert sounded,to fathers' quiet amusement,who had once seen Gran and her rocking chair fall through the kitchen floor into the cellar and knew there was only a thin screed of cement
under the tiled kitchen floor.
One moonlit November night,a crowd watched from the top of Market street as enemy bombers flew low over the gasworks at Etruria,firing at the full gasholders.There was a novel firework display,a real Brocks'Benefit,as many bullets rebounded,others pierced the
holders which,fortunately,didn't explode.
A black painted Hawker Hurricane night fighter intercepted the bombers which
jettisoned their incendiary bombload
onto empty fields at Berryhill.As we
watched the sparkling lights and the blaze which started in the dry grasslands,we never thought that years after the war many of the small boys
enjoying the spectacle would be in uniform for National Service!

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