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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Louise Treloar of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team from Mrs Hilary Clarke on behalf of the Longstone Local History Group, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

The memories are taken from a special edition of a newsletter kindly submitted by Longstone Local History Group. It was edited by Liz Greenfield and published in Autumn 2002. Longstone was a village which sheltered evacuees and was comparatively unaffected by air attack, although the night sky was often lit by the fires of the Sheffield Blitz.

(Hilary Clarke and Sheila Hurst recorded this extract in 1994 when Herbert Benett was 89. He died soon afterwards.)

I was in the APR in the war and took training for mustard gas and all that at Bakewell. An advert came in the paper; they were asking for volunteers up and down the country. We had thorough training, not difficult. I enjoyed it. I remember the bombs dropping on Crowhill Lane. We were out singing with Mrs Goodwin’s choir and she packed up, but I wanted to carry on. There wasn’t much else, a few incendiaries at Youlgrave and a bomb that burnt down Earl Sterndale church. I went to see that. Longstone church was all sand bagged and there were ladders ready to get up on the roof. The village was empty of young ones; a lot went out of Longstone really. I was at Thornhills on the farm, not poultry. We grew crops mainly and didn’t go short of anything in the war. I had a pig up at Thornhills. We grew a lot of our own stuff. All the farmers grew potatoes, corn, cabbage, anything you like to mention.

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