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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bill Ross of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Bill Cooper, and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See also: William (Bill) Cooper remembers: A4904066

September 3rd, 1939. Time 11-15,a bright and sunny Sunday morning.
Neville Chamberlain, our Prime Minister had just been on the radio to announce that he had issued an ultimatum to Germany to withdraw their troops from Poland, and that should Hitler fail to submit such an undertaking,
cf)~ England would declare war. No such undertaking was given, so for
the second time in just over twenty years, our country was at
war with Germany.

I remember standing with my father at the bottom of our passage,
basking in the Autumn sunshine. All at once the eerie sound of
the air raid siren was heard. We expected bombs to rain down
on us immediately, but life went on just as before. Our family
used to like Sunday for the simple reason that the radio series
‘Hippodrome’ was broadcast on Sunday night. Its main characters
were Harry Korris and Enoch, who played the stooge.

An air raid shelter had been delivered to our humble home, and
had been erected in our back garden. My father planted mushrooms
at the back of the shelter, of which he was very proud. My eldest
sister, who was named Gladys, and my elder brother Robert used
to volunteer to clean the shelter out after it had rained, as
the water used to settle on the shelter floor.

There was another
reason that they were so keen, and that was that they had both
started to smoke. Eventually my father found out about this and
caught them. He pulled both of them out of the shelter and made
them smoke a cigarette each. After smoking about half of it, their
complexions turned a funny gray. For the moment both smokers
decided that it was bad for their health in more ways than one.

My father was a labourer at Kayser Ellison’s steel works which
was about a mile from where we lived.
During the next few months, we went through what was called the
Phoney War. The Germans mounted a few nuisance raids and we did
the same. At this moment in time the war was not going very well
for us and the miracle of Dunkirk had just been accomplished. After this, the raids began to be more frequent
and mostly at night.

My father, Robert Cooper, who had been injured in a steelworks,
joined the ARP as a warden. He would come home from work, have
his tea, don his ARP overall and helmet and report to the local
ARP post for duty.
After Dunkirk, the sirens were sounded more frequently. When my
father came off duty he would tell us what state of alert the
town was in.

The highest state of alert was the purple. When he
told my mother that the purple was on, she would gather us all
together and we would sleep in the shelter. This went on, on a
regular basis until my father put his foot down. He said that
we might as well get killed by a bomb as die from pneumonia
in a damp shelter. My youngest brother John, was only six months old
at the time. When the ack-ack guns had been firing at passing
raiders, my friends and I used to go round the roads looking
for shrapnel from the spent ack-ack shells.

My father gave his life during the Sunday night blitz, along
with nine of his comrades; they did not find his body for a week.
Our home had been completely destroyed and we were living with
our Aunt Ada, my father’s sister. They brought my father’s body
there for burial. It was screwed down with orders that it was
to remain that way, but my mother had other ideas. She wanted
to say her goodbyes and to see who she was burying.

Waiting while
we were all in bed, she unscrewed the coffin lid and took her
last look at my father’s body. His body was so badly damaged that
she could only identify him from his clothing. At the time of
the Sunday night blitz, my father was working. As soon as the
sirens went, he came home in his working clothes. He always wore a waistcoat. Somehow or other, my mother got hold of this
waistcoat, and she treasured that piece of clothing for thirty
years, until she was persuaded to throw it away. The bizarre thing
about the waistcoat was that you could still see the bloodstains
after all that time.

With my father gone, my mother had the task
of bringing up six children. A few months after my mother’s sister
Nellie died in childbirth, leaving two young children, which my
Mother, Annie Cooper, added to her own brood, therefore bringing up eight
children in all.

By this time my sister Gladys and brother Robert
were of working age, but at the time of my fathers funeral, there
was no state benefit. Through his kind generosity, my Uncle Cedric, paid all expenses for the funeral and our
funeral clothes.
Those two nights, Thursday and Sunday, the 12th and 15th of December,
1940, even at the age of 75 are still fresh in my mind.

Pr-BR

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