´óÏó´«Ã½

As told to Alan Brigham, Hullwebs.co.uk, 17/07/2005

We used to live off Princes Avenue.

I remember the year before the war Chamberlain told us that there wouldn’t be any war in our time and we got our gas masks soon after that.

The day it started, it was a Sunday, my mother went by car to Harrogate, with my young brother, to be safe with a relative. She left us; there was my dad and me, and a brother who was away in the Far East. We said that what we’d do if the buzzers went off, well we’d play darts but when the buzzers went off I went frantic. I was running down the street and there was some soldiers and they were going crazy. I put my gas mask on and when the all clear went that was that. Even now, even fireworks, if there’s a noise I’m wide awake.

We slept in our shelters, we had bunks in them, ours was a concrete one. We used to go in there with everything important. I had my two dresses and a handbag with my jewellery in, mam had all of the polices in her bag. Well we slept in there for about nine months and we didn’t sleep hardly, we were always listening. It wasn’t very enjoyable but people were very nice to one another.

The first time I remember bombs dropping it was frightening. You felt they’d come just for you. I remember seeing all of town ablaze. You could see it across the river. One morning, about half past eight, a German plane came over. You could see its crosses, it was really low. It didn’t drop any bombs or anything but they were looking weren’t they, looking for targets to bomb, they had to look. My father wouldn’t get up, he said he wasn’t moving. My young brother was funny, he was back then; they’d been evacuated but they was back, he was about 12 and I remember him putting two legs in one trouser coming down the stairs. He was never frightened though. He was too busy collecting shrapnel with his mates on Newland Avenue and there was looting going on in the food shops, people were just helping themselves to the food from the shops.

There was some houses totally flattened by us. You’d wake up and they’d just be gone. Lambert Street School, well half of he school got bombed; it backed onto our house and when the bombs dropped we all hoped it was our school. Just round the corner, you know De Gray Street, two people we knew very well died; they were in the gas cupboard and they got killed together. That was the nearest. There’s still a gap there now.

I used to go dancing upstairs in St Vincent’s and we used to go in fancy dress, if the buzzers went I used run like mad home.

I was an Air Raid Warden. I had a tin hat, a uniform and a little green book. One of my brothers went in the Navy, he had to go in the Australian Navy co they were short, like. My other brother was sent to the Far East and he was a prisoner of war in Changi Camp, they’d hardly got off the boat when they were captured. All of his letters came back. I used to tear them up so my dad wouldn’t see them. I wish now I’d kept them all. He used to say that if he hadn’t been brought up on porridge, and without much money, he’d have never survived. Because he’d had it hard as a kid, he was tough. He had to bury his own officer. He made a little cross while he was there, a rosary, rings, dogs, cats — all out of bone. The first I heard of him after the war was in the paper. He’d volunteered to stay back. He only weighed six stones. When we went to meet him at Paragon {Paragon Railway Station}, he had a big case full of silk kimonos and you name it. Samaria swords. There were no official there to meet him. No one. They were just forgotten.

I went to London for VE and I was on the bridge when it was all happening, the fireworks and everything, and I was in Harrogate for VJ day. I remember a firework hitting my leg and it went all black — I survived the war but finally got hit on VE day!

Up to that time I was an optician. It was an exempt job, but I’d love to have been in the Land Army. After the war he came down from the office and told me that was it. He couldn’t afford to keep me so I was finished. 15 years I’d been there and I was finished just like that.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.