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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Jo Thomas of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Frank Carr and David Carrigan and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

Part 1 of this story can be viewed at www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A8948578

Part 2 of this story can be viewed at www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A8949900

Part 3 of this story can be viewed at www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A8949388

Would Britain have won if the USA didn’t help?

DC - Probably, if one is honest and looking back now, we didn’t realise it at the time, it was a very important thing that America did come into the war when they did. I think we would have liked them to have come in a lot earlier, because when war broke out in ’39, this country, stood alone against the forces that were attacking from Germany and going all over Europe. So I think so, that’s my opinion now anyhow looking back — that they had to come into the war at some stage, the sooner the better. Eventually they did come in. But even so, before they came into the war, what you have to remember as well, is that they were providing us with food and all sorts of things, although they weren’t directly involved in the war.

FC — Yes, we had this lend lease where they were providing us with destroyers and ships, because we had very little equipment left in the early part of the war. We hadn’t got many aircraft, we hadn’t got many ships and America was providing us with this sort of equipment. Then at the end of the war, when all their forces came over here — oh I’ve never seen the like — one day I remember seeing, going up Herries Road, hundreds and hundreds of tanks and they were mainly American tanks. They must have been on the way for the invasion, they were going up all day, tank after tank after tank — the road was a mess after they’d done this with it, but this was the sort of equipment that America provided us with.

Did you see any German soldiers?

FC — We saw German prisoners of war. There was a prison camp at Redmires, that’s up near Lodge Moor, and there were prisoners of war up there. At one time, there were Italians and then later on in the war, there were Germans. They used the prisoners of war to build some of the roads on Parsons Cross, some of the concrete roads around where St. Thomas More’s Church is. They used to wear, a big cross on their back, either yellow or white, so you could tell that they were prisoners of war. But I mean they were nice people some of these prisoners of war, people became friendly with them, especially the Italians. There were prisoners of war who made very good for themselves, Manchester City had a great goalkeeper who was a German prisoner of war, Burt Trautmann.

DC — I didn’t see any, because of course, fortunately 20 miles of water stopped the Germans invading this country. If you know about Dunkirk, from where all the British troops came back from France when they were in retreat and coming back to the home country, that 20 odd miles of water prevented the Germans coming over here, so we were never invaded as such by German forces. So, civilians didn’t see Germans, but anybody who was fighting in the war of course would see them.

What kind of bombs were dropped?

FC — There were incendiary bombs, these were bombs which started fires, they had some magnesium in that burns very fiercely. Every few houses has a stirrup pump, to try and put these things out if they landed on your house, or fire buckets. Anybody who had a stirrup pump had SP painted on the front of their house, so that any neighbour knew where they could go to get the stirrup pump. The fire bombs were small ones, but they caused a lot of damage.

Then there were the heavier explosive bombs that caused a lot of damage. The biggest bombs of all were the landmines. Normally when a bomb drops it goes into the ground, it’s under the ground when it explodes. But landmines came down and exploded as soon as they were at ground level and caused a lot more damage, they were devastating.

What sort of things were in the bombs?

FC — I don’t really know, it was just high explosive. They had some sort of detonator which was a minor explosive that then set off the big explosive material that was in the bomb, but I don’t know what it was.

DC — Well you know what you have on November 5th, fireworks, they are explosives. They’re controlled so they are not supposed to cause much danger, but they can be very dangerous and they’re only fireworks. Now if you imagine the increasing scale on the explosive and that explosive is in a metal container, some bombs were very big, and when that exploded, it broke open the case and that metal broke into fragments, then there was a blast effect like a very high wind, it could blast windows out, blast buildings down and the metal shrapnel from the bombs would kill, go through buildings and set fire.

FC — It was bit like thunder and lightning, you know when you see lightning, you hear the thunder some time later, it takes time for the sound to travel. The bombs were a bit like that. The one that fell on Southey Green that we spoke about earlier, wasn’t during the main Blitz, it was sometime later, but it was a very bright flash in the sky. My father said ‘Wow! That’s a bright flash,’ and we had a door on the shelter and he opened it and popped his head out to have a look round to see if he could see anything, and nothing happened for probably 7 or 8 seconds. Then all of a sudden the blast arrived and it blew the door back on his head, knocked him flying back in the shelter and the noise came with that, it was a terrible noise — you imagine like we said the fireworks, but about 20,000 times bigger!

Did children have to leave on trains when the war was on?

DC — Yes, some children were evacuated, as we called it, and they were taken out into the country to really live with strangers, but they were out in the country and deemed to be in a safe environment where bombs wouldn’t drop. And they had to go, invariably if they were going any distance, on trains. But trains in those days were not like the trains we see now, in those days they were steam engines and they were rather slow.

During the war, you didn’t travel a lot, not like nowadays in peace time, you go on holidays and go everywhere, but in those days you didn’t. It was very much a case of staying at home.

Did anyone you know get evacuated?

FC — Yes, my best friend at school was evacuated. He came one day and said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, 'We’re being evacuated,' and he and his sister went off somewhere. They were away for about 7 or 8 months and then they came back because no bombs had fallen then in this part of the country, and they thought it was safe to go back. But they went to a different school, so I lost contact with him then and that was rather sad for us.

DC — I had 2 cousins who lived in Liverpool, which was a major port, and still is, and because they were getting more bombing than we were, they came to live with us here in Sheffield for quite a bit of time. So they were evacuees coming to live with us if you like. But there was another thing opposite to evacuees really. There was a time in the war, after Dunkirk when all the troops came back, when we had to find somewhere to look after them and care for them. One day there was this troop of soldiers being marched down our road on the Shiregreen estate, and they were billeted out. In other words, anyone who had a spare bedroom was asked to look after, depending how big the room was, 1 or 2 soldiers for a period of time and feed them. We got 2, and that was exciting as a youngster, because they came and they’d got all the rifles on their back, and they stayed with you and lived with you until they went back as a fighting force. So that was like evacuation in reverse, they came to live with us. They were both very nice, but one of them couldn’t read or write, he hadn’t had that kind of education, so the other one had to do everything for him. I thought that was very nice that the one who could read and write, used to look after him and do all sorts of things for him. But it was exciting because of the army kit that they had with them, especially the rifle. I thought it was great to look at that.

They didn’t tell us anything about what they’d done or seen, but my eldest brother actually came back from Dunkirk, where they were very much under fire leaving the beaches to get back to this country. He told us about how he’d come back in the bottom of a coal bunker. They were ships that were just big holds that coal was loaded into to transport it. But any ships that were available had gone across to France to bring the troops back, even little pleasure craft. I remember he came back on the bottom of a coal bunker, he was very grateful for it, a bit dirty coming back that way, but at least he was coming back to safety

Did you see any people living in trenches?

FC — No, they didn’t live in trenches here, the trench warfare happened where the soldiers were on the front line and they dug the trenches so they could get down and keep out of the gunfire.

What was it like in the blackout?

DC — Dark! But it was strange, if you think about now when you look outside after it goes dark, and the number of lights you can see over Sheffield and the surrounding area, it’s all a mass of lights. But when the blackout was on, you could go outside your house when it was dark and you could see nothing. It was completely black. Come to think of it, I don’t think there was a lot of crime in those days, despite the fact that it was dark. I suppose most people, certainly over 18, were involved with fighting in the war.

Another thing they had in the war was barrage balloons, which were massive balloons like an airship, like you see on television sometimes where they have an airship floating up in the air with a camera looking down on sporting events. Well barrage balloons were big rubberised balloons, they would be probably half as big as this classroom and they were inflated with air and rose up. There was a big metal cable attached to it and when the balloon went up probably to a thousand feet or more, it was attached to a vehicle on the ground with a winch. The reason why we had them was to stop low-flying aircraft coming down and dropping bombs from a low level. If they did do that, they would catch their wings on these metal cables and it would bring the plane down. These were all over the place and exciting for kids. We used to run around finding out where they were and watch them being operated.

But one interesting point was, once when my Dad was back home, there was a blackout and there was a raid on and we were in the shelter, and my Dad was late home and he eventually came in all hot and bothered. What had happened was, he was coming down and because it was the blackout, he couldn’t see anything, he heard this scraping noise and he was walking down our road, he looked up and he saw this shape in the sky, and of course he thought it was a German parachutist coming down. So, he moved backwards in a different direction and this thing seemed to follow him. But really what it was, was a barrage balloon that’d broken away from the vehicle it was attached to and it was floating along with this big cable dangling and scraping along the road, but because of the blackout he couldn’t really see it for a long time or decide what it was.

FC — During the blackout you couldn’t even strike matches, and every window in your house had to be covered so that no light escaped at all. In fact, one night, my father was coming home from work, we lived on Lamb Road and next to it was Lamb Drive. They were both very similar, and he went up the wrong road and into a house up Lamb Drive — looked round when he got in and he was in the wrong house! So it was difficult to find your way round in the blackout!

DC — What they used to have is somebody delegated on probably each road, or every two roads, who was called a Warden, the Air Raid Wardens, and during the blackout, certainly if the sirens went off, they were patrolling the area making sure everything was safe, and if they saw a light from a house, guess what they shouted — ‘Put that light out!’ in a very loud voice, because of course it could have been dangerous. So every light had to be out and every window had to be blacked out. If you opened the door to go outside, you had to make sure that the light was out before you opened the door, so you didn’t let any light go outside at all. So it was very, very dark!

Was it nice living with strangers?

FC — Do you mean when they came to stay at our house? Well, we didn’t have so many strangers, but what we did have was another family come and stay with us because they were bombed out. They were cousins of mine and after the Blitz, this character appeared at our door covered in soot, he was black as night and he said, ‘Can we come and live with you? — We’ve got bombed out.’ I went back with him to their house at Walkley and we carried as much stuff as we could. No trams were running then, nor buses, because the wires were all down. We carried stuff from their house back to ours and they came to stay with us until they got their house repaired again, which took 6 or 7 months. So although they weren’t strangers, we had a house full — 2 cousins, their mother and father and a lot of their furniture! There was also a dog that they lost in the Blitz and we went back to look for the dog, but couldn’t find it anywhere. And strangely enough, it turned up at our house, so somehow that dog had found its way from Walkley right over to Parson’s Cross, I still don’t know how it found its way! Tim they called him and he turned up somehow.

Pr-BR

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