´óÏó´«Ã½

I was seven when the war began and I can remember playing with a top and whip in our street. They used to bring the mail by bike and I can remember the telegram lad going and handing a little brown envelope to a lady who lived in our street. The screams that went up terrified me, I can hear them now. Her son was in the merchant navy and she had got word that his ship had gone down and he never came back.

I can remember seeing his memorial in the paper for about forty years after he died.

I can also remember going to church the night the lads went over for the D Day landings. We were at a service at Holy Innocents at Spennymoor. I had a brother in the 8th Army Desert Rats and the other one went over for the D Day landings. It was a very emotional service.

I can remember my Mam crying because she hadn’t had a telegram from my brother because he was in the desert with Rommel.

Another memory I have is that we were never short of eggs because we kept hens. We used to keep the potato peelings to make ‘crowdy’ and we had to give up our egg rations to get the oats to put in the ‘crowdy’.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.