大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the site by the 大象传媒's Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with Jean Burgess'permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

We used to have to carry gas masks with us every time we went out of the house. Everyone was given a gas mask in a box with a cord to hang on your shoulder. Small children had 鈥淢ickey Mouse鈥� gas masks with a red tongue at the front and for tiny babies there were large container like gas masks for them to lie in. We all had ration books; cream in colour, and children under five had green ones. We also had Identity Cards, which we carried in our gas masks boxes.

Air raid sirens used to sound to warn us of enemy air raids and we children accepted this as part of our everyday life. We also had air raid shelters that we would go to, if we were out in the streets when the siren sounded. All schools had these shelters which were dug underground and had benches each side to sit. We seemed to spend a lot of time in the air raid shelters. We still had lessons during air raids; usually these were learning our 鈥淭imes Table鈥�, or singing. One day we were walking to school, when a German aeroplane came down low firing machine guns, but luckily for us children there were lots of soldiers around and they shouted to us to get down on the pavement while they covered us with themselves, but the plane never came back. Luckily no one was hurt and we weren鈥檛 frightened at the time, just excited.

One night my mum woke up saying that the air raid siren had sounded, so we hurried down to the basement as was the normal practise. The land lady would make tea and we would sit on the stairs opposite the front door. All of a sudden the front door flew open with the force of an explosion. We all spent the next few minutes watching dog fights over the common. (That was the name given to aeroplanes fighting in the sky). One of the things we children used to collect was shrapnel 鈥� also pieces of aeroplane after these dog fights had taken place.

Around this time a room became vacant in the house we lived in, and was quickly taken by a strange couple who didn鈥檛 appear to speak very good English. Once or twice they would be waiting for me to come in from school, and ask if I would go to the shop for them for some groceries, but never for anything that required a ration book.

By now, mum was expecting another baby and one night after I had been in bed a few hours, mum woke me up and she was shaking. I thought at first she was going to have a baby, but it wasn鈥檛 that. She told me to be very quiet, and we tiptoed down the stairs, past the strange couple鈥檚 door and down the basement to wake the owners of the house. Then mum told them that she had been woken up by lights flashing and getting out of bed she opened the window and saw the couple from down stairs using Morse code. They were obviously signalling to the enemy. The landlord went out of the front door to fetch the police but by the time they arrived the couple had left and taken all their belongings. Needless to say I didn鈥檛 go to school that day and it turned out the couple were German spies.

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