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Bob's Wartime Childhood Memories

I was 4 years old when the war started. My Dad had already joined the Territorial Army and so he was called up before the outbreak of war in September 1939. He was sent to a holding camp in Harton, South Shields and my first wartime memory was of my mother taking me and my sister to this camp to see my father. We spoke to each other through a wire fence behind which there seemed, to me, to be hundreds of other soldiers, all happy smiling soldiers who were able to see their wives and children across the fence before being embarked to their various postings throughout the country I did not see my father for a while after that. He was in the army (Royal Artillery) for more than 6 years.

My second childhood memory wasn't quite so pleasant. It was at the very beginning of the war and my mother and I were walking home from my Aunty Sal's, as we got to Goschen Street, just off Thompson Road, the sirens sounded. It was early evening but getting dark and everyone was very frightened by the sirens -- an awful sound. To make matters worse an officious ARP warden came along and wanted everyone off the streets and into the shelters. My mother didn't want to go into the shelter, she wanted to go home, which was only about three quarters of a mile away, but this ARP man insisted that we take cover and we were bundled down into an Anderson shelter in a nearby back garden. The shelter was not only full of howling kids but also half full of water, so there we were, down in the dark, cold and damp with lots of crying children. Of course being very young I was totally bemused by the situation and I began to cry myself. For a little boy who had just been left by his Dad to take care of the 'family' for the duration of the war, to be frightened at my first experience was too shameful to think about, and I carried the shame of it for the rest of my life.

Our own Anderson shelter must have been dug out by my Dad when he came home on leave. It was sunk into the back garden, just about 5 or 6 yards from the back door. It was about 6 foot by 6 foot of rounded corrugated iron sheeting which was then covered with earth; it had a wooden door and a flight of steps down into it; the floor was about 3 feet below ground.. On the inside, I think there were 2 or 3 double bunks with iron stringers, it was a good place for us kids to play, we'd go down in there quite happily during the daytime, although to get into our shelter you did have to undergo the torture of having your fingers welded together with hot candle grease.

Shortly after the war began I started school at West Southwick Infants -a mixed school. My first teacher was Miss Gibson. I think I was a favoured pupil,--- perhaps because my sister Joan, my only sibling three years my senior and who fairly spoilt me, taught me to read and write before I went to school. Also, Miss Gibson lived in Elmwood Avenue just round the corner from our house in Chestnut Crescent and she knew my mother. I really enjoyed Infants School even though it was a fairly long way to go to get there. We had to walk right down Elmwood Avenue and then across the Wellfield. I think our Joan took me to school when I first started, then I would go on my own. One thing I remember about the walk down was that I was always envious of two or three other kids who had clogs, I wished that I'd had clogs so that I could kick sparks from the iron doggers.

It was just after I started school that my mother went out to work in Binns bakery. She had trained as a bakeress but she hadn't worked since she鈥檇 married and started a family, so as an infant my sister would take care of me until my mother got home from work. Although Joan looked after me, I could easily amuse myself. I would empty the sideboard and climb inside and then I would drive that sideboard all around the countryside, it could be a tram or a car or even a steam train. Also the flight of stairs was a good place for playing by myself; the stairs would be a bus or tram, the imaginary passengers would be seated all the way up the stairs, I would take the money, give them change, tell them off, and ding ding the bell. When that palled I would probably climb on the stairs and find out how many steps I could take in a single leap without breaking my neck. It was quite a happy childhood and I didn't notice at that time the restrictions the war brought because of food shortages and so forth.

We lived in Chestnut Crescent in Marley Potts council estate. There were lots of families living around about us - the Joblings, the Sherrifs, the Smiths, the Kiplings, the Boshers, the Hubbards - and there were plenty of kids for neighbours so there were lots of street games. There was a gas lamp outside our door and this meant that our gate was a gathering place for all the children and although there was a 'black-out' and the man with the long stick to light the lamp no longer came around, the gas lamp was still a favourite hangout. The lamppost was the block for hidey, it was the base for playing d'levo, also a long rope could be slung over the top arms and it became a big swing. This swing could be quite dangerous for us tinys who could get caught in the middle when the rope tightened around the lamppost as it swung round and round. A long skippy rope was often attached to the lamppost and it was stretched right across the road. A line of children would to skip in unison. It would be two or three years before I would learn to run in and run out so I had to be 'in' before the rope started to turn, but you would get short shrift if you snagged the rope and you would no longer be allowed in. The skipping was always accompanied by a variety of chants such as, 'When I was in the kitchen doing a bit of stitchin' but there was no shame to boys joining in the girls games as long as you didn't snag the rope. The pavement underneath the lamp was used for 'Itchy Dabber' - you would slide a heavy stone or an itchy dabber into a numbered square then hop on one foot to kick it back to the start point without crossing any lines, Joan and I were in demand for this game because, before the War, my father was a glass blower at Hartley Woods glassworks and he had made some fine glass itchy 'dabbers' for us. Everyone wanted to use our itchy dabber rather than just a rough bit of stone or old boot polish tin filled with pebbles.

Ball games were the staple diet of the street, though--on your own kicking a 'tennisy' against the wall, a pair of you for 'headers', or sides picked for football between 'jersey goalposts' else dustbin lids for stumps at cricket. This was also a time that tested my own loyalties a little bit because when my mother came to the door to tell everyone off for climbing on our fence or swinging on our gate --- should I agree with my Mam or should I join in with the rest of them as they ran down the street shouting and laughing and jeering

It was while I was still in the infants that there was another major change in my life. My sister, Joan was evacuated. At that time in 1940, because of the bombing, children were being sent away from home and Joan went to live with my Aunt Margaret in Carlisle which was much less dangerous than staying in Sunderland on the east coast among the shipyards and industry. Joan must have only been away from home for about 3 months because afterwards my mother told me about the time when paying a visit to Carlisle and on seeing how desperately unhappy Joan was at being away from her family - perhaps away from her little brother - my mother decided that Joan would come home. And so the three of us spent the whole of the war living in Marley Potts overcoming all the hazards the Nazi Hun could throw at us.

Another period of disruption was when I caught diphtheria. Joan had diphtheria first and I think she caught it much worse than I did because, she was very seriously ill and was whipped away to the Isolation Hospital. When they took swabs from me and found that they were positive, although I wasn't terribly ill, I also went into the Isolation Hospital but into a different ward from my sister. We spent quite a bit of time there and I was treated as though I was very poorly and was spoilt by the nurses. In those days diphtheria was very dangerous and on our ward certainly there was a child died in the bed just across from me. Fortunately Joan survived and we came home. The Isolation hospital didn't allow parents to visit you and sit by the bed, they had to view you through a pane of glass to avoid the infection spreading further. Other than that I had a quite a healthy childhood; we made sure we got our cod liver oil and malt and we would go to the clinic to get orange juice and at school you had free milk. For coughs and colds my mother was a great believer in Fennings Fever Cure. A spoonful of that and your cheeks caved in and your lips were dry for a week, but you never caught cold. The old remedies were used, when you had a great bruise on your head it would be to rubbed with butter and when you cut your hand open with a knife there would be salt poured into the cut then wrapped up with bandage (thin strips of sheeting)

I had the usual boyhood accidents--my thumb was caught in the cogs of the mangle and is still disfigured today. Another time I went to hospital was for a broken arm. That would be when I was 7 or 8 and I had fallen off the railings, I could see that my arm was broken but I had to be bathed and to put on clean clothes. Only then could I go to the hospital in Newcastle Road to have it put in plaster.. I was never bothered, as a lot of other kids were, with Impetigo when heads were shaved and blue dye was put on you to keep your head clear and you would have people shouting after you in the street 'scabby heed ah seen yu clinic card'. Perhaps Joan and I should have been grateful rather than defiant at having our hair combed night after night with a fine tooth comb.--still; we were allowed the satisfaction of cracking the nits between our thumb nails. The only other time you visited the clinic was to have your teeth out. The clinic was in the old town hall on Southwick Road. I still remember when I had my baby teeth taken out. There, with perhaps 20 or 30 other children, all to have gas to have the teeth removed and the awful nightmares that ensued as you were having your teeth drawn were horrendous but you got very little sympathy from the school nurse.

Shopping was very different from today. Because of the food shortages there were always long queues in the shops, particularly at Chalks the greengrocers. I was always envious of young Chalkie, even though he was a little drip, because I was sure he was eating my, as well as many others, share of apples and pears. I hated coming back from Eckbergs the butcher in Beaumont Street. Mam would take it out on me because I came home with scrag-end when all his favoured customers were getting pork or beef from under the counter.

We had our milk delivered by May Thompson from a little pony and trap. The milk was measured out from a heavy metal churn into a long handled gill measure and then into your own milk jug. Arthur Maw delivered vegetables by horse and cart but I didn't enjoy it if our street hit "lucky" and I had to collect the horse droppings in a bucket for the garden. The ragman came round with a small "flat" and blew a bugle to attract custom. We weren't allowed to forget the time Mam had to go rummaging among the rags to retrieve her best dress that we'd exchanged for a goldfish. Fortunately the goldfish had survived long enough to be handed back intact. Not all of the deliveries were horse drawn the pitmen's coal allowances were delivered by lorry and tipped in the street. Mam would buy coal by the bucket from Mrs Kipling next door and it was carried to the coalhouse just inside the back door. The lorries moved quite slowly, you could hang on the tailgate to get a 'backer'. On the steep part of Elmwood Avenue there could be a whole line of boys getting backers up the hill from school.

I moved from the Infants to High Southwick Juniors (boys segregated from girls). This was a school where there was a little bit more discipline but despite the fact that it was on the bus route we still walked to school every day.

When you walked to school you took care that you went by Shakespeare Street instead of down Goschen Street where you would have to pass St. Hilda's Boys School. In those days there was quite a lot of antagonism between Catholics and Protestants. If a Catholic boy went past our school we would throw stones at him and similarly if you walked past the Catholic School and they knew you were a Protestant you would get a few stones thrown at you. It was even worse when the snow was on the ground . It also meant a longer walk if you wanted to hang around the blacksmith shop behind Keats Avenue to watch the horses being shod. Moving on to High Southwick, it was a different world. The boys were older and I took good care to keep in with the stronger lads in the school; the good fighters like Donny Henderson and Lenny Taylor but at the same time I was still good pals with the academics like Peter Russell and George Swalwell. I was in both camps and so I enjoyed High Southwick - the headmaster was Mr Kelsall and in the last 2 years of the school Miss Hudson, who was a real disciplinarian but a good teacher, took us in readiness for the 11 plus. I am sure she didn't understand why we sniggered behind her back when she told us off for having no "spunk".

We took our gasmasks to school and had air-raid warnings every now and then. Instead of the shelters being reinforced on the side of the yard it was now a reinforced emplacement in the cellars of the school and so when the air raid sirens sounded we would troop down flights of stairs, gasmasks on, into the school shelter.

The other thing I remember about High Southwick was the schoolyard - this was the playground really. Our day began with a little bit of discipline, a whistle was blown at about five to nine and the school master or mistress would expect everyone to stand to attention before the second whistle was blown and you then ran to into your line, Of course after the first whistle instead of standing to attention, as soon as the school master鈥檚 back was turned you would move 2 or 3 paces in order to get closer to your lines, trying to avoid being caught by the school master who would, in all conscience, know that there were kids moving behind him. The second whistle was blown and you would move into your lines in order to get into your class.

I remember only a few of the names in my class; Frankie Evans , Brooksie Hepworth, Gordon Heavisides, Ronnie Mould, Harry Robinson, Jimmy Musgrave, Malcolm Miller, Dezzie Straughan, Gordon Sanderson, Tommy Plumpton, Joe Curtis, Richie Reah, Alan Nelson, Alan Parkin, Ivan Horabin, Brian Hope--we split into different schools at 11years old and I lost touch with most of the others.

At playtime in the yard and at dinnertime there would be games going on, with people riding their horses clicking their tongues slapping their backsides: In games of tiggy on high. there was a 'catch all' for everything -- just as you were about to be caught you would leap into a corner and say 'lock doors lock windows' and that would absolve you from being caught. It was great in wintertime when the schoolyard was covered in frost and because it was tarmac and because we had heavy shoes (or the longed for clogs), you could create long slides down the sloping schoolyard. There were long lines of boys running hell for leather onto the slide's icy surface and it became icier and icier as more and more kids slid down it.

The toilets were on the side of the yard adjacent to Shakespeare Street and the urinal was against the boundary wall. The wall was not too high and a line of small boys standing away from the wall would strain to see who could pee highest. I am sure that folk walking down Shakespeare Street would often be surprised at the sudden onset of wet weather.

I had my midday meal at school and these dinners cost 5d each. Each week you would go to school with 2s-1d for a bunch of 5 tickets and you had to hand one in for each meal. I became a dinner monitor responsible for carrying the heated cans of food up to the school hall. The other place we used to eat was the Civic Restaurant - Civic Restaurants were a wartime phenomenon - there was one on the corner of Carley Road and Southwick Road. I think it would be Saturdays when my mother would be at work that my sister and I went down with the prepaid token - you could get a meal maybe for tuppence or threepence. It was very good; we enjoyed walking down to Carley Road for our Civic meal, then carrying on to Aunty Sal's who lived near the Halfway house with my Nana (Grandmother).

The war didn't intrude too much on a schoolboy's life in those days. There were several occasions, however which do stand out. The night that the bomb dropped just behind Marley Crescent in the fields up there and that was the very night we didn't go into the shelter and we were stuck underneath the table as the bomb whistled down towards us. The other occasions were when bombs dropped fairly close at hand, one in Beaumont St and the other one just behind Southwick Road; us kids would rush down there and pick over the bomb sites. The times when we went down into the shelter --maybe two or three times each week at the height of the bombing-- we would get a commentary from the fellow next door as to where the bombs where dropping and which planes were in the searchlights. Only rarely were we truly frightened. At night there was the black out which meant that you had to be careful as you walked around the streets against being knocked down by vehicles with pin-pricks of lights, and there was always the rumours of people getting 'tackled' in the dark and the fact that we couldn't go down to beach because the seafront was blocked off and wired off.

There were the extra things that wartime boys did such as searching for pieces of shrapnel and looking for items amongst the bombsites. During the winter nights we would wander up to the next street, Maplewood Avenue, where there was a barrage balloon; an Army wagon with a hawser drum attached. The barrage balloon crew quite enjoyed having a few kids running about the place and often gave us a cup of tea when they were brewing up. One incident that could only happen during a war was the time the lad across the road, Georgie Hubbard, had to go to hospital because he found a 303 bullet and hit the percussion cap with a hammer and the explosion split his hand open. Another was when my Dad was home on leave and he and Mam had been to the pictures. Mam was really shaken when she was flung by my Dad into a shop doorway in High Street because the street was being 鈥榮trafed鈥� (machine gunned) by a Stuker, a very narrow escape. We lads could always distinguish between one plane and another. You could always tell the drone of a German Dornier when it came across and the scream of a Stuker diving was horrendous. Whereas the sounds of Spitfires, Hurricanes and Wellingtons were quite different. These were the extra lessons we learned as young children. The War was always there but it didn鈥檛 spoil the fun.

Our family was very lucky that we occasionally had a respite from the bombing when we stayed on Uncle Percy鈥檚 smallholding at Westgate-in-Weardale, 40 miles from the coast. It was another world and I was quick to convert from townie to farm boy as soon as I climbed the hill. Chester鈥檚 was about a mile from Westgate at the top of Peat Hill; water had to be collected from the well, lighting was by paraffin (Tilley) lamps and there were earth closets but there was the luxury of eating butter, meat and fresh eggs. I had the time of my life. We were under the charitable command of my cousin, John, who looked after the farm while his father worked in Sunderland during the week. I helped around the place, in hindsight not as effectively as I imagined at the time. I enjoyed feeding calves and chickens, bringing in cows, forking and raking the hay and leading the horse. I didn鈥檛 enjoy pulling up ragwort or cutting thistles; my enthusiasm for farming waned after only very little exertion. Our playgrounds were very different from the streets of Marley Potts. There was Slitt Wood with its tumbling stream just waiting for new dams to be built, swimming in the deeper River Wear where we swam underneath the water to avoid cleggs (horse flies) settling on the skin; the quarry, after the men had gone home; - (a hooter used to go off at noon every day and if you were playing in the vicinity you had to take shelter under a dyke back as the quarry blasted rock high into the air. Perhaps I wasn鈥檛 in as much danger as I imagined at the time.) The backfield behind Mrs. English鈥檚 cottage, a cottage where the roof sloped into the hillside enabling the more adventurous to climb to the ridge 鈥� the farmyard at Dalton鈥檚 farm.

Getting to Westgate from Southwick was an epic journey with bus changes in Sunderland (from tram to the SDO bus), Durham (United), Crook (Weardale Motor Services) and last of all Stanhope where the Cowshill bus to Westgate seemed little more than an overgrown car with only 9 or 10 seats. The train journey had fewer changes but still took an age; a dimly lit steam train on a single line track through Weardale, the guard exchanging the key token at every station and signal box 鈥� watched by a small boy, eyes streaming with soot grit ignoring demands to keep his head inside and shut the window. Back at school I would cling to the memory of the visit and retain my Weardale accent for weeks afterwards.

The war didn鈥檛 restrict our movements at home either. We had much more freedom to roam than any of the children today. We played mainly in the street but also wandered far and wide. One of our favourite places was the Swallow Dene. This is the dene between Castletown and Southwick where we would hunt for birds鈥� nests and blow the eggs; swing on ropes and generally have a good time or we would go just a bit further across to the Bunny Field opposite Hylton Castle or down to the 鈥榣iney鈥� 鈥� the railway between Alexandra Bridge and Castletown Colliery. It was dangerous but not so bad as the rope hauled wagonway that ran across Thompson Road behind James Armitage Street. Even more dangerous was the 'hopper' down at Wearmouth staithes where you would be dared to jump from one coal barge to the next. We would play in the disused quarries in Carley Hill just behind the working Fulwell quarries. The disused part was used not only by us children but we used to see manoeuvres carried out by bren-gun carriers going up and down the hillsides there. We played at Thompson Wreck, (it was not until I was adult that I realised that rec was short for recreation ground), but the rec had a lot of quite hazardous apparatus There was the monkey climber the shuggy boat the skinny lizzie and the teapot lid We would also go as far afield as Boldon because that had a higher banana slide. On the way back we would stop at Boldon Flats to try to catch some newts. Better than the rec were the shuggy boats that would set up on derelict sites or street corners and you would pay your tuppence to work your way up into the sky by pulling on the ropes of the shuggy boat. It was an awful disappointment when, too soon, the brake would be applied by the gadgie and the boat would shudder to a stop.

Just opposite the wreck there was a little shop that had quite a unique sale of carbonated water; you ordered your coloured sugared water and they carbonated the water while you waited by putting the pressure on to make it fizzy. The other treat --- there were no sweets except in the occasional Canadian food parcel --- was to buy 1d sticks of liquorice (riglish) root from Tonks on the Green. The root would be chewed and sucked until the brown bark and yellow fibre was converted to a white piece of thin string You would often share with your friends and suck the same piece of riglish, wait patiently for the gowk of an apple/rind from an orange or finish off the last remnants of taste from a pal's chewing gum. A failure on the DIY front was "Spanish". A piece of thick black liquorice was put in a bottle with some water and shaken until the liquid turned black. No matter how hard you persevered the resulting taste was always a watery letdown.

Sugar was at a premium but it was a delight to eat a slice of buttered bread dipped into the sugar bowl or to have a stick of rhubarb with the end sweetened by sugar. You would use your tongue to dip into a paper wrap of mixed cocoa and sugar and it was worth the risk of a smack to quickly sneak a finger into the butter and sugar mixing for a cake. We bought cinammon sticks from the chemists, and we could smoke it as well as eat it. Everyone smoked in those days and, when Dad was home on leave, I would snitch one of his Woodbines or one of his dumpers --- folks smoked their cigarettes in stages and would nick (extinguish) a fag two or three times --- from the mantelpiece to share it with the older lads in the street. Each cigarette was passed around; you had to inhale or you were excluded next round and you had to remember to keep your lips dry or else you had the scorn of leaving a "netty-end" to live down

We caught the tram to go across the town - pay a ha'peny tram fare- and we went to High Street Baths. High Street Baths used to reverberate to the sounds of shouting voices but we taught ourselves to swim quite competently. The highlight of going there was to buy a penny dip - this was a bun, dipped in gravy, which you ate ravenously on the way home. I also caught the tram to go to the Cubs. I joined the Cubs at Bishopwearmouth because it was quite a small cub pack, just setting up, I became a sixer fairly quickly. A sixer meant that you had two yellow stripes on your arm and you not only went on a Friday evening to Bishopwearmouth Church Hall in Low Row but also you went to cub camps. We went to Sharpley a couple of times to sleep in bell tents for 3 or 4 nights.

Other sources of entertainment were cinema, books and the radio:-Cinema was a good part of our lives because on a Saturday we could go three times. First on a Saturday morning we would go across to town to the Havelock - the GB Club - this cinema performance was just for children and was in four parts. In the first part all the children sang along to bouncing balls 'We come along on Saturday morning greeting everybody with a smile. We come along on Saturday morning knowing that it's all-worthwhile' then there was a cartoon and then the serial. My favourite serial was of Johnny McBrown a cowboy with a white hat and a white horse. The big picture would usually involve train robbers or gangsters or cowboys and dependant upon what sort of film it had been, kids would all come out from the cinema playing the part; you would be either riding a horse or you would have your raincoat over your back as a cloak because you would be a knight or you would be driving a fast car all the way home. The second showing was an afternoon at the Savoy Cinema. The Savoy was the cinema on the Green at Southwick and Mrs Oliver was on the door collecting your sixpence as you went in for the same sort of show as you had gone to in the early morning, a cartoon, probably a science fiction serial featuring Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon - then a big picture. The third time would be in the evening, with your Mam, again to the Savoy, when you would probably see a Greer Garson film and do a lot of crying. The most memorable film I saw at the Savoy was Peter Lorrie in 'The Beast with Five Fingers' - a horror film that gave me nightmares for about a week afterwards.

Books also loomed large in our lives We read a lot; not only did you have your own library ticket for the library in Kings Road but also Mam would read her library book to you: 'Ho! quoth the varlet' - Jeffrey Farnol, or more often the romantic Georgette Heyer novels. We didn't read newspapers or magazines, it was always books from the library - Richmal Crompton's Just William - Arthur Ransome that sort of book.

As well as the books you would listen to the radio. We had a Cossor radio, which used re-chargeable lead-acid batteries. It was a glass battery with a handle, which you had to carry carefully down to Sam Pace's garage and pay a penny or twopence to have it charged. You often got some comedian who would tell you that you could swing the battery over your head without spilling the acid at all - you would try that and sometimes you got away with it. The radio was great, though, because as well as the popular shows like ITMA there were dance bands and later on in the war we used to sing the tunes that the Americans sang, tunes like 'This is the Army Mr Jones', 'The kids all called him Johnny Zero Johnny Zero is a hero'; 'You gotta get up you gotta get up you gotta get up in the morning' There was the comedy of Arthur Askey and Vic Oliver in Variety Bandbox and in Monday Night at Eight. The most frightening programme was 'Man in Black' This was a series of stories read by Valentine Dyall a man who had a dark, deep voice. The stories were read out on the radio late at night and, because everybody had penny meters, you took particular care to ensure that the meter was full of pennies before 'The Man in Black' started as you wouldn't want the lights to go out while the horror story was in full flow. So this was a very pleasant time to sit around the radio or read your books or go out with your Mam to the cinema. They seemed to be really good times in retrospect.

I was 10 years old before the war in Europe had finished. We had our street party in Chestnut Crescent. Tablecloths were put on trestles; all of us kids were waited on; our Mam's serving us cake and sandwiches and no longer did people say, "That鈥檚 too much sugar in your tea --- don't forget there鈥檚 a war on!" I felt a bit of an outsider at that time, though, because everyone was hailing Winston Churchill as a hero whereas I鈥檇 been indoctrinated by Mam and Nana that Churchill could never be forgiven for calling out the troops during the General Strike. I stuck by my Mam.

My Dad came back from the War in 1946 and things moved on to a different sort of regime. We hadn't felt that there was anything exceptional about us growing up during the war We didn't think of ourselves as being under-privileged or being deprived in any way and perhaps we were the last generation of children who grew up with an innocence and childish sense of fun with none of the high aspirations of today. We weren't aware of knowing our place but it was typical that you would never enter or knock at a pal's door for fear of disturbing his parents .Instead you would stand outside chanting "Jimmy --Are you coming out" in the hope of a reply. Certainly a much less sophisticated childhood than the generations which were to follow.

Bobby Emms

(60 years on)

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