大象传媒

I was 12 years old when the war started on the 3rd of September 1939, and lived with my parents and sister in Runwell, Essex.
Our side of the Church was considered a safe area, so we were not issued with an 'Anderson' Air Raid Shelter. These were reinforced corrugated iron shelters set about 4ft. into the ground. The top was covered with more soil for added protection and some people grew plants on top for camouflage. Deck chairs were used to sit in, but the shelters were very cold and a lot got water in when it rained.

Most towns had public shelters. A lot of people would take their food and blankets and spend every night in them.

At the outbreak of war, all government offices, banks and important buildings had piles of sandbags outside for protection and blast walls were built in front of doors.

People living in London used to go down to the underground tube stations each night and there were hundreds of bunk beds all along the platforms; the trains ran as usual. Every night was 'Party Night'. They had sing-songs and many well known Stars would entertain them. There was one tragedy when a bomb fell at the netrance to one of the tube stations. It went straight down the escalator and killed many people, but fortunately this did not happen often.

War was declared on a Sunday and as soon as it got dark, the first air-raid siren sounded. A neighbour had told my sister and I so many dreadful tales about how Hitler was going to use poisonous gas on us, that we put our gas masks on and would not take them off again until after the 'All Clear' went. The warning proved to be a false alarm.

As we had no air-raid shelter, our beds were raised up on bricks, with another mattress on the floor. When the raids got bad, we went under our beds, hoping the upper mattress etc. would protect us from any debris.

When the war first started, we did not return to school for the Autumn term, as there were no shelters, so we did not go back until around Christmas. There were still no shelters, so we had to go to various parts of the school when the sirens went, as far away from windows as possible. The windows were all covered in a very fine sticky net to stop glass flying around if a bomb came too close. My class had to go to the girls' cloakroom when the siren went.

When we first returned to school, the local children went on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The children who came by the school buses came on Tuesday and Thursday. Then the next week we changed days.
We all had to stay for dinner as we only had half an hour. The dinners cost 4d a day or 1/6d if we paid for the week. (This was in old money).

School finished at 2pm, so we could all get home before the 'Black Out', and before the raids started. We could always tell when we were going to get a raid, as the radio went silent. There were no televisions in those days!

We did finally get shelters at school. They were built out on the playing fields: five for the girls and five for the boys. They had no lights in them, so we spent hours sitting in the dark singing songs.

All the male teachers were called-up for National Service. One lady teacher, called Miss Frietog, was interned because of her German connections. (Many doctors and staff at Runwell Hospital were also interned for the same reason).

A lot of children were evacuated from the town to the country for safety. Some went overseas to Canada, America, New Zealand and Australia, but one of the ships carrying children was torpedoed and many lives were lost, so no more children were sent overseas.

Children from the Southend area and inland as far as Rawreth were mostly evacuated. Many houses stood empty, especially around the Airport. Police were on duty at all railway stations and turned people back who wanted to go into the Southend area, unless they worked there, or had a good excuse for going there.

Barrage balloons were attached by long wires to boats off Southend and when a raid was expected they went up very high, so that shipping could not be bombed. If the planes camein low, they would have got caught up in the balloon wires. London and many aerodromes also had barrage balloons.

There were huge coils of barbed wire all along the seafront, so we could not go on the beach thoughout the war.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.