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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Holly Fuller of Leicestershire Library Services on behalf of Mrs Jean Bailey and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was five years old when the war started so I do not remember much. I was living in Harrogate, near Leeds in Yorkshire. I did experience the blackouts but on the whole we were very lucky and were not subject to any air raids. I can remember a couple of bombs dropping nearby but they were not part of a raid as such.

One memory that sticks in my mind is of my Grandma coming in at night having bumped into a lamppost because she couldn’t see in the blackout. Being so young I was not affected by this.

My Dad was away in the war he served in the Royal Army Service Corp in the transport section. He didn’t come home often but one night, my Mum got a knock at the door, and not wanting to open the door to a stranger she asked who it was. My Dad replied; ‘Its me!’ My mum not recognising his voice said; ‘Who’s me?’ My Dad again responded; ‘Its me!’ In the end my Dad said; ‘Its me, Frank’.

It was strange when my Dad came home at the end of the war. It took me a long time to get used to him; he had been away for six years of my childhood. My vision of him changed considerably from when I was five to when I was nearly twelve.

I can remember queuing with my Mother to get our groceries. Although food was rationed I believe we were much healthier then than the children of today. We used the dry egg to make scrambled eggs and we did not have sweets as they were rationed. I did miss bananas and oranges. Your sugar ration had to be weighed and the amount of butter you were allowed was cut; you did not have any packaging for it like today. Biscuits were even sold loose, when you could get them. The queuing continued in shops after the war was finished.

We even had to have coupons for clothes, I was too young to worry about where my clothes came from. I can remember, however, visiting my cousin and helping out in a local shop and counting people’s clothing coupons. On one occasion a customer came into the shop asking for bile beans. I did not know at the time these were special beans that people took to purify the body and I asked the shop owner how many clothing coupons they would cost!

One of my most vivid memories of the war was when my Mum would take me to visit relatives in South Shields. On one occasion we were waiting to board the train at York station to take us there. The train pulled into the platform and some soldiers beckoned for me to get on the train first. I was on the train when it started to pull off, however, my Mum was still struggling to get on. As I felt the train start to move I began to scream for my Mum. I was very scarred, fortunately, someone helped my Mum on the train in the nick of time.

I am not really sure why Mum decided to take us on a few days holiday to South Shields as it was not much of a holiday really. We spent most of our time in our relative’s air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden!

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