大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Laura, a pupil from Teversham Primary School on behalf of Phyllis Matthews and has been added to the site with her permission. Phyllis Matthews fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was twelve years old at the start of World War Two. Earliest memories are having to black out windows every night to stop any lights shining. Or else an Air Raid Warden would be knocking on your door and saying 鈥淧ut that light out鈥�. We spent our nights in an Anderson shelter. That is my Mum and Dad and three brothers, listening to gun fire and enemy planes going overhead. We also had a search light battery at the bottom of the road, where the Soldiers were billeted.

Food and sweets were rationed and we had dried eggs, which I thought quite nice.

Going to School - we had to carry our gas masks everywhere we went. We had to go into brick shelters if the Air Raid Sirens sounded and carry on with some work and wear gas masks on the odd occasion to get us used to them, thankfully never for real. I left school at fourteen, worked as a housemaid in a private school and joined the Girls Training Corps.

We also had Doodlebugs coming over - VI and VII rockets - and you had to duck when the noise finished as they crashed to the ground. Horrible things.

I joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service early in 1945, trained in Guildford and was then stationed at 鈥淗鈥� Coy Vimy Block at Catterick Camp in Yorkshire. I met future husband there and demobbed in 1947.

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