大象传媒

WHEN WAR WAS DECLARED
I remember hearing when war was declared. I dashed up to my friends house. We used to see in the papers about the Spanish Civil War with people walking along with bundles on their backs and I thought it would be something like that and that we would all have to leave home with bundles. My friend came to the door and I heard this plane. We were near the coast and I thought it was a German plane but it was only a plane on patrol.
AIR RAID SHELTERS
There were different types of shelters. If you had a garden, which we had, you got an Anderson shelter. There was a deep square hole and they came round with big sheets of corrugated iron which had to be bolted at the top. It was higher than the ground to give you room. All the dirt from the hole was piled on top. There were table shelters as well and the big public ones. One of my brothers concreted the bottom of the shelter and we had some kind of bunk beds to sleep on. We kept candles and things in them because we use to have air raids nearly every night. We could hear them coming over by the sea - you get to know and recognize the drone noise. The siren was just at the top of the street and we used to dash into the shelter. We might be there a couple of hours. Some nights we used to get out of the shelter and back into bed and the siren would go again.
There was a massive gun at Grangetown behind the Cemetery - there was an army camp there. The gun was so loud - they called it Big Bertha. It used to scare the living daylights out of me. . When the German planes came over, there were the paper mill chimneys and my mother used to say - when they see these paper mill chimneys, they are a landmark and they know they just have to go further up the coast and they'll come to the shipyards.
I remember one day going into town - the Winter Gardens and the Big Binns store - all that block had been flattened by bombs.
I remember one night at the Royal. They normally showed films but that night it was live entertainment. The siren went and we all had to come out of the cinema and walk home. We must have just missed a tram. The lights were dimmed. I got as for as Villette Road and I just had to cross the road and this plane came zooming down over the top of the roofs. It was so low I could see the markings. I could hear this man shouting "Get down, Get down". Then the plane climbed up again and dropped a bomb at the bottom of Villette Road. A doctor come running out and went to the scene. It exploded and several people were killed. It was very frightening, I was terrified; I thought it was the end because the plane was so low and so loud.
Disclaimer: Story submitted by Allison Brook at Willington Library on behalf of Mrs Ellen Hendry

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