大象传媒

Gladys lived in a cottage in Sunderland with her mam, dad and brother. Because she had a back garden, she had an air raid shelter. She was lucky because hers was made out of brick and her father and brother even put bunk beds in it. It also had a concrete ceiling, a parrafin heater and a parrafin light. She said that once, a bomb fell on the shelter, but it just caught fire and it was estinguished before it caused any serious harm! Her mother then decided to use the utility room instead because she thought that if it was unsafe in the house, then surely it would be unsafe in an air raid shelter. So she put a table in there as the ceiling was only thin so they all sat there under a table, on a mattress. She said that when she used to go to bed, it was scary because you would wonder if there would be an air raid. She said that she lost 2 - 3 of her friends because of the air raids but she said that she was lucky because no one in her street was bombed however, there was a lot of houses missing nearby! She said that she could remember a bomb called a doodle bug and they were a miniture version of an aeroplane that they could set off fron France and they could glide over here and could land anywhere. She said that they made a whizzing sound and you knwe when they were going to land because the noise stopped. Her dad was an ARP warden and when the siren went off, he had to parole the streets. The swimming baths were often closed becuase they wwre given to the forces so she said you could hardly ever go swimming. But she occasionally went top the pictures, she can remember seeing 'Gone with the wind' and the acrors she liked at the time were Clark Gabel and David Niven. However, she said that by the time she was a teeneager she always went to dances with her friends. She said that during the blackout her father would walk her to the tram so that she was safe. One time, she went to Edinborough and there were some American soldiers and the wouldn't leave her and her frieands alone, she said that there were always soldiers at the dances.

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