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 Kathleen Wibberleys permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

I was born in 1934 so my memories are that of a young schoolgirl who lived on a farm. I well remember the paper salvage collection. It was announced in Morton School that paper was wanted urgently so the teacher devised a competition for the children. If you got 5 newspapers you got 1 point, if you got one magazine you got another. When you got to five points you had the rank of Private. If you got to 10 points sergeant and so on until you reached the top Brigadier General or something similar. Thanks to an old gentleman called Tom Knight who helped my father on the farm I made top rank. He told me to go and see his wife Emily, it appeared their daughter who was a nurse had saved piles of nursing and medical magazines, so every night I went and bundled as many as I could carry and took them to school were they were stored until the collection lorry came. We were presented with a cardboard badge which was fastened to our coats and changed every time we moved up rank.

I also remember men coming round and burning off the iron railings from the houses and gardens and the church yard. You can still see to this day were some of the railings were off the top of walls. I believe the iron was used to make shells and bombs for the aircraft.

We had a large Air Raid Shelter which was in the school fields, when the sirens went we were ushered to the shelter down steep steps and sat on forms in the bottom along with the families from New Street and waited until the ARP wardens told us the All Clear had gone. I think a lot of this was practice drill as at home I remember getting under the stairs when the air raid sirens went. We had no electricity and black out curtains had to be put up, which in our case was a black piece of cloth hung on nails inside the proper curtains before we lit the gas lights and lamps. Half the time the gas matches, which were very delicate broke trying to light them in the firelight. The ARP men patrolled the village to make sure everywhere was in darkness for when the planes came over on their way back from bombing Sheffield, which was severely bombed as it was.

In 1941 my brother John was 2 years old and became very ill. This was diagnosed as Infantile Paralysis, most children died of this and the vet who came to one of our cows said 鈥淧ray for him to die Mrs Smith鈥� when he knew, needless to say the vet never came back to the farm again. John was wrapped in a red blanket and sent to Lodge Moor Hospital in Sheffield by Ambulance and there he lay in an Iron Lung for many weeks and months all the time they were bombing Sheffield, he made a fairly good recovery but still walks with a slight limp.

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