´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Dominic Penny of Link into Learning on behalf of Dot Reynolds and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s Terms and Conditions.

In the summer before the declaration of WW2, rumours and fears were understandably rife. My Mother and her associates were no exceptions. As an 11 year old girl, I naturally listened to all these opinions etc., but one which I will always remember, came from my Mother, ‘if war comes, it will be a terrible war — I have been told that the Germans are so technically advanced that it will be no good running to the nearest field to escape the bombs, as we did in the last war, because a plane going overhead can hear you breathing!!!’ Of course I believed all this, so I thought the best thing I could do, was to practise holding my breath every time a plane came overhead!! I soon realised when the war started, that this was a futile exercise.

A night to remember

War was declared, as expected, and the Germans lost no time in dropping their bombs, although worse was to come and this period was called the ‘phoney war’. The first air raid we had, started during the evening and continued all night for 9 hours. We dutifully went into the Anderson shelter which we shared with our neighbour. They were two young couples and a baby, there were also four of us, my Mother, Sister, Brother and me. There wasn’t very much room. We had one little luxury, a small Tilley lamp which provided enough light for the confined space we had. The noise was horrendous. Fortunately, there was a lull in the attack from time to time, giving us a few minutes to nip into the house, to the toilet, or to pick up some refreshments, but what a shock we had when we made these trips, to see what looked like the whole of the City on fire. The sky was deep red and glowing.

Our main worry was for Jack my brother. He had gone to night classes in the city and hadn’t come home. We learned later when he did arrive home during the early hours of the night, that ‘yes, the whole city did seem to be on fire’. He wanted to get home because he was worried about us, he being the ‘man of the family’. He took the responsibility very seriously, although he was only 19. People used, occasionally, to ask why he wasn’t in uniform. There was a simple explanation, he volunteered as soon as war was declared, but was turned down on medical grounds. He had a heart defect which neither he, nor my Mother knew about. At the time, we didn’t know whether to be relieved that he wouldn’t be in the fighting line, or worried about his health. However, he was living in London at the time, so he packed his bags and came home to look after ‘his girls’. To get back to the blitz, he tried to walk home, but the air-raid wardens were everywhere, rounding up people in the street and making them go in the shelters. He kept managing to escape and get a bit further before being ‘picked up’ again, which is why it had taken him all night. But that didn’t matter, we were so relieved to see him.

The devastation that met us the next day was almost unbelievable. One of the worst tragedies of that raid, was the direct hit on a night club in the city, where it was said there were about 500 young people. There were no survivors! Our school had not been bombed, but there wasn’t a pane of glass left in the whole of the building. ‘Home Service’ had to be introduced.

This meant that a group of willing Mothers had volunteered to have a small group of children and a teacher in her house, for lessons. It wasn’t terribly successful. Sometimes, due to a hiccup in the organisation etc., the teacher didn’t turn up, so the poor Mother had to stand in, usually by reading from a classic book. But two hours was a long time in those circumstances.

Fire Spotting

I was absolutely dying to be called up and when I was 16, wanted to join the Land Army — but my Mother wouldn’t hear of it. But the one thing I could do, was to take my turn on duty, fire watching. I was working by that time at Boots the Chemist’s main branch in Sheffield. Most of the men had been called up, but there was an old night watchman, so a rota was drawn up of teams of three, 2 women and one man, each night. My friend and I volunteered for Saturday nights, which pleased the other female watchers, but there was method in our madness. After the shop had been shut, we went up to the canteen and cooked our tea, being careful to remember to take a cup of tea and a sandwich of some sort to old John, our ‘man’ for the night. Tea over we changed, glamoured up, and after reassuring John that we would be back before midnight (he grumbled a lot) or straight back if the siren sounded, we went off to meet our friends at either the Cutlers hall, five minutes away, or the City hall, less than ten minutes away, to the dance.

We were always back just after midnight, (the dance finished at midnight anyway) and went straight to bed, we were in the nurses fitting room on camp beds, John wasn’t supposed to sleep, but he always nodded off in the Boss’s office. We were up next day, very early, geared up for a day’s hike. Super weekends, and there never was a raid while we were on duty.

However, one night, sometime during the hours of darkness, a large van drove into the yard, broke into the shop, and got away with hundreds of pounds worth of stock!! We never heard a thing, even though the van had to drive right past our window, and John, well, he was as deaf as a post anyway!! That took a lot of ‘living down’.

Mrs Carter

One other thing that comes back to me every so often — particularly lately, was something my old music teacher said to me. I went as usual for my daily music lesson, the war very much on my mind, and knowing Mrs Carter would listen to me and give me her honest answer (she was the first person who treated me as an adult), I asked her, ‘Why do we have to have wars?’ Her answer is still imprinted on my brain —

‘There will always be wars, the young men (this was 1939) have so much aggression in them, that if they didn’t fight wars, they would be fighting each other. There will always be droughts, floods, epidemics, plagues of some sort, famines and earthquakes, it’s the way of the world, perhaps God’s way of keeping the population down’.

I told my Mother when I got home, she was furious ‘filling a young girl’s head with such rubbish’. Nevertheless, I still think of Mrs Carter’s words!!

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