大象传媒

I remember the gas mask practises at Eastgate school. Now I hated putting my gas mask on. It was a small one, in fact it was too small, my nose touched the clear front. I hated it when you breathed out and the sides flapped against your face. In the end they took mine away from me, so I didn鈥檛 have one for quite a while. We had to line up before going into school and the teacher would check to see if we all had our gas masks. I got into trouble. I said I hadn鈥檛 one, in the end I had to walk across Newport Cemetery to get one from the ARP Warden who was stationed in the Stone Cottage in Newport.

I remember the air raids, by now we had a Morrison table shelter. The bomb that was dropped on Battles the chemist, the bombs on Monks Rd and the Nurses Home on Lindum Terrace. The Sunday afternoon raid when shrapnel rained down through the trees on Nettleham Rd.
There was a raid around January 13th after I had been to my cousin鈥檚 birthday party and we had just got in and the sirens went. My sister, who was working, had just left work at the old GPO and was running home in the blackout, when she bumped into a lamp post and my father went to look for her. She had blood running all down her face and was sobbing, fortunately she suffered no other harm.

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