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I'm a pupil from Heaton Manor Comprehensive School, Newcastle Upon-Tyne, entering Mr Kirkby's story onto this website, and they fully understand the website terms and conditions of use.

Mr Kirkby
Newcastle

In 1939 when war was declared I attended Heaton Grammar Boys secondary School in Newcastle, I was eleven years of age. Everyone was called into school to be prepared to be taken away. We were each given a carrier bag with a Gas mask, identity card, a tin of corned beef and a tin of condensed milk. We were taken to the Newcastle cattle market and put into lines; we didn鈥檛 have a clue where we were going.

We were put on a train and sent to Whitehaven, Cumberland. It was crowded on the train and it felt like we had been travelling for hours. The whole school was unloaded and we marched from the station to Whitehaven Grammar school and sat in a big hall with thousands of other children from Newcastle. People came in and chose a child they wanted, I and a few others were left till last, and I think it was because we were the scruffiest!

I was taken to the house where I was going to stay in a motor car; I had never been in a motor car before it was very exciting. I stayed with a very kind old couple. I moved from a house in Newcastle with no electricity and a toilet in the back yard to a house that had everything, it even had a garden.

I stayed in Whitehaven for about three to four months and nothing had happened, so the school was brought back and normal life started again. I remember a stick of bombs were dropped one killed the caretaker鈥檚 wife, another hit the gym and the music rooms. The goods station was bombed and burned for days. Life was exciting!

I remember all the children used to collect lumps of metal that had been left by the aircrafts. There was a particular nasty bomb called the butterfly bomb and a number of times a child would find it on the ground and pick it up and BANG!

Eventually school opened again. Air raid shelters were built at the back of the school, each class had there own shelter. The teacher used to say no talking and if someone talked you had to put your gas masks on.

Because of rationing the diets were very healthy and there was never not enough food to eat. Bananas and other fruits were in short supply some of us hadn鈥檛 seen a banana in five years!

I remember one time in Whitehaven; we lived on a steep bank. Winters at this time were very bad and the snow was 20 feet high. I remember sledging down the hill in the deep snow that was fun.

I left school in 1944 and joined the Navy. My Dad was in the Royal navy in the First World War and the Second World War he was called up and I didn鈥檛 see him for four years. Because he was quite old in the Second World War he became an instructor.

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