大象传媒

You hear a lot about Anderson shelters but a lot less about Morrison shelters and they were a far more sensible idea. Every organisation was called in to do some war effort
and the Boy Scouts were ideally suited to erect these table shelters, as they were just like a large Meccano set.

The council would deliver the kit to the address and we would arrive and construct them. Because the shelters were designed to double up as a table as well, it often meant that we had to carry the existing table into another room. The four corner posts (made of half inch angle iron) were the heavy bits and it took two of us lads to carry them into the house. All four were connected, top and bottom, by other pieces of angle iron and the whole looked like a telephone kiosk on its side. The top was a very heavy lump of quarter inch plate, measuring 3鈥�6鈥� by 6鈥�6鈥� and when it was laid on the framework it made a grand table. The bolt heads could be a bit of a problem but the completed shelter looked so robust that no one seemed to mind.

Our next job was to make the bed. We made a warp and a weft of flat strips of steel and fixed them to the bottom angle iron with springs and they made a comfortable base for a mattress. We fixed strong mesh to the side that made a cage. I helped build one in my own house and Mum and us three kids slept in there all through the Doodle Bug raids.

It seems a strange thing to say, but these shelters were designed to have a house collapse on them, but most of them were erected in jerry built houses where the walls were like paper. If it did happen the claustrophobia must have been terrifying but at least the occupants were unharmed.

I can鈥檛 boast that any of the shelters that we erected saved any lives, but they would have given the occupants a good night鈥檚 sleep, safe in the knowledge that they were well protected.

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