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Doris was a young girl during the time of World War II; she was at the tender age of 8 when it all started. Her earliest memory was of a quiet Sunday afternoon, when loud sirens began wailing in her ears. She and her family rushed for shelter in the pits, they feared that it was an air raid. Luckily for them, it was only a false alarm!

Back then; she lived in the area of Tanfield Lee. At her school, they built large underground air raid shelters in case of an emergency. She very much so enjoyed Friday afternoons as they practiced going down into the shelters. She was reminiscent of the fact that it was dark and gloomy down there, but during the practices that sang songs to keep themselves happy!

However, probably one of the worst parts of the war experience was the blackout. This was where, at night no lights were to be on in the town so that the German bombers couldn’t see where people were living. Every house fashioned thick, black curtains that were to be drawn every night to keep the light in. People would patrol the streets and if they saw even the tiniest speck of light, they would give the owners of the house a good earful! Could you imagine living in such darkness that you couldn’t even see your hands? I couldn’t. They used to wander the streets at night bumping into everyone from not being able to see. They came up with an extremely clever way around this: They all wore tiny florescent buttons in the dark so that they could see people coming, ingenious!

Now, I’ll move onto the more serious matter of bombs. At night, the German planes followed trains along the tracks to other towns and tried there hardest to bomb. One time they were successful in a place called ‘sleepy valley’ where there were a few bombs dropped, it must have been petrifying.

You have to feel sorry for Germans; they didn’t particularly want war any more than we did. Some of the prisoners worked on farms over here in Britain, and on a Sunday they would occasionally be invited in for Sundays lunch! Then, there was a pilot who was foreign, but was part of the British army. He bailed from his plane after it crashed and walked for miles looking for somewhere to go. But, because he was foreign, everyone thought that he was a German and wouldn’t let him in! Poor man. It goes to show, that even though this area may not be as famous and as important as London, it still has a rich history, and you know what they say, only a fool isn’t interested in his past.

Thank you very much Doris - Rebecca Lowther and Sean Scott

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