大象传媒

We were very lucky, we lived in a big house on Woodland Road, Darlington, my father had been a farmer and when he retired he and my mother and myself moved into our new home in Darlington.
When the war broke out the authorities came and inspected our house and explained that we would have to take members of the armed forces who would be billeted out.
We had a large town house and all the soldiers sent to us were officers. My role was to stay at home and help take care of the house and the officers, if this hadn't happened I would have had to work in a factory or on a farm as part of the war effort.
We didn't have our own air raid shelter so when the sirens went off we used to run to nearby Stanhope Park to share the communal shelter, it gave us a chance to meet up and get to know our neighbours!

The officers who were boarded with us didn't speak much about the work they were doing, they were all quite highly ranked, but I know one of them was involved in some kind of scientific work in which he had to research all the different gases. One day he brought home samples of all the different gases and let me have a smell of them all, goodness knows what they were!
Looking back now, I'm not sure of what his job would entailed but I am sure it was not very safe.

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