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I was born in 1928 in Norton on Tees, the only child of Joseph and Gertrude Kidd.

My father had contracted a disease called Bilharzia while serving in Egypt during the Great War and been nursed back to health by my mother at the Military Hospital in Birmingham. They married in 1920. The smell of gangrene remained with my mother all her life, and it was still very fresh when it was time for war again.

I think the first inkling I had that war was coming was Christmas 1938. My uncle, Fred Kidd (of the engineering firm of Fred Kidd & Son) was the catalyst that brought the family together at the festive season. The adult conversation was of a man called Hitler and what might come. Not that it was all serious stuff: my cousins all did their party piece, which comprised mostly either singing or reciting. I had tried to learn the old Music Hall favourite, ‘Burlington Bertie’ but never had the courage to perform it in public. (Fortunately, I was never asked.)

In preparation for the coming conflict, my cousin, Joe, signed on as a boy seaman in Royal Navy and went off to train at Scapa Flow. My father, Joe, joined the T.A. and was attached to the Drill Hall, Middlesbrough RA (HAA). He was given a job in Quarter Masters Stores, for which his work in the Supply Department at ICI since the early 20s made him ideally suited.

The Drill Hall’s defence weaponry consisted of one Bren or Lewis gun mounted on the roof, and a rack of Lee Enfield .303 rifles in the store. Dad’s unit did have a parade just before war broke out, however, which I greatly enjoyed. There were big lorries pulling anti-aircraft guns, which made hissing noises when the hydraulic brakes were applied. As I watched the spectacle I had no way of knowing that my father would be called away for duty on the very day war broke out and that my mother and I would subsequently leave our nice home.

At school it was my scholarship year, which entailed undergoing something termed the Intelligence Test. It was designed ‘to sort the wheat from the chaff.’ I took it — and failed! During the part of the war were only required to attend one hour per week to take down homework for completion by the following week. This was due to the fact that no air raid shelters had yet been erected.

At home, our Anderson shelter was delivered and with dad being away my mother had to call upon our neighbours to help put it in place. Digging went on until the regulation depth was reached, the shelter was then properly sited and covered with earth. As part of the Dig for Victory campaign, the remainder of the garden was planted with vegetables.

I joined the boy scouts, the Peewit Patrol of 2nd Norton Group to be precise. I liked everything about scouting, the uniform and the things we learned, things like how to tie knots and make campfires. Scouts proved themselves very adept at collecting things for the war effort. Newspapers, aluminium pots and pans, metal objects, all these things went into our homemade buggy and transported back to headquarters for re-cycling.

As a defence against air attack, Barrage balloons appeared in the skies over Teesside. Sixteen of the first two-dozen quickly came down, however, as a result of having been struck by lightning. I don’t know if anyone was killed, but there certainly were injures not only among the crews but also civilians. I was in the Modern Cinema at the time the first air raid siren sounded. We all had to leave and walk home. Nothing actually happened, but my mother decided that, especially with my father away, it might be a good idea to leave our home in Grantham Road and go to stay with my aunt Hannah.

My aunt Hannah Kidd lived in Weardale. She had just lost her husband, Harry, and I think our arrival took her mind off her loss to some extent. No sooner had we taken up residence, however, than the local billeting officer paid her a call looking for placements for three evacuees — all brothers - from Byker, Newcastle upon Tyne. In the end she took two of them, the third going to live at the vicarage.

Now those evacuees had probably seldom, if ever, had a bath in hot water (a luxury in those days) but that did not stop my mother thinking that aunt Hannah was very mean to bath them in it. It was true that aunt Hannah would not use two pieces of coal when one would do, but I think she was more careful than mean with her resources. And that was a good quality to have in wartime.

Those boys weren’t the only evacuees to the district, and the village school I attended at Westgate did very well under the circumstances to accommodate them all. There they were, lads like me from urban areas just like the one I’d come from. Most of them had never even seen a cow much less milk one! And they had to learn what amounted to a completely new language i.e. accustom their ears to the local dialect, which contained such pearls of wisdom as, ‘whist!’ ‘bide thee hush!’ ‘thoos’ and ‘gannin’.

We all learned to live together, but us youngsters had our gangs. As far as that was concerned, I came under the heading of a local, since my evacuation had been voluntary, while the Tynesiders etc, were dubbed ‘vaccies’ since theirs had been state-organised. I enjoyed playing with the local kids. We built dens, explored Slit Wood and Swinehope Burn, fished in the River Wear and the burns, and learned about sheep and cattle. I saw bullocks castrated and bulls covering cows. Yes, I learned a lot about ‘the birds and the bees’ without formal sex education!

My mother and I moved into a rented cottage, where we were able to use our own furniture and bedding; it had a typical cottage fire with bread oven and water boiler. I learned how to apply black lead where it was needed and to light the fire — and keep it burning.

The German bombers would often pas over Weardale either en route to or returning from their targets. Sometimes they would jettison bombs and we would hear the ‘crump’ as they exploded. We youngsters were taught to look out for things like parachutists landing. They never did, of course. In fact the nearest I got to that sort of thing was finding a leaflet stuffed into a stone wall. It could not have been blown there. The leaflet was in German and contained the word, ‘Berchtesgarten’. I handed it in to the local police, but heard nothing more about it. I suppose they couldn’t speak German, either.

My cousins, Flying Officer Alfred Kidd and his sister Margaret Kidd, who was in the WAAF’s, had a spot of leave together and came to see us at the cottage. Among other things, they attempted to teach me to swim in the River Wear at a spot called Brotherlee. That was the last time I was to see Alfred. At the time of his death he was navigator aboard a Lancaster heavy bomber. His aircraft was hit and caught fire over Cologne. The pilot ordered the crew to bale out. Alfred and another crew member jumped. They both landed all right but while the other crewman was taken prisoner, Alfred was killed — the Germans murdered him — in retaliation for the bombing. Ironically, in what must have been a magnificent feat of flying, the aircraft’s skipper managed to get it back to RAF Wittering. When they learned the full facts, I suppose that was cold comfort to Alfred’s parents.

And remember my cousin, Joe, the boy seaman? He was no better off on the ‘briney’. Torpedoed twice, once very early in the war while serving aboard HMS Caledonia and later on aboard HMS Gurkha, he decided, after a spell in MTB’s, that it might be safer BENEATH the waves. Consequently he joined the submarine arm, specialising in radar and asdic aboard HMS Andrew. It could have been worse for Joe, though: his schoolmate, Eric Dawes, from St John’s Chapel, went down with HMS Hood.

My father was too old for overseas service in WWII and ended up doing supply duties for the battery at Grangetown, Sunderland, where he was kept very busy. In 1942 he was taken to Cherry Knowle Hospital, Ryhope, Sunderland, with rheumatoid arthritis. Mum and I went to see him there. Eventually he was transferred to Lartington Hall, Barnard Castle.

Lartington Hall was the home of Mr and Mrs Norman Fields. He was a brother of the family, whose name was one half of the Marshall Field department store empire in the United States. He and his wife had kindly consented to their ballroom being converted for use as a convalescent ward for military personnel. My mum received a letter inviting us to go and stay there for Christmas so as to be near my father. It was arranged that we would stay with the Head Gardener at his house.

The winters were severe all throughout the war and that year was no exception. I remember the snow lying very deep as we travelled by train to Barnard Castle. How we got from there to Lartington Hall... Anyway, we did and were duly installed in the Head Gardener’s house.

A party had been arranged for Christmas Eve at the Hall itself, to which we had been invited. Beforehand, however, my mother and I had tea with the Estate Manager, a Mr Rodgers, and his wife. During the conversation, we learned that their daughter was a ballerina with the Royal Ballet. Afterwards we duly presented ourselves at the Hall at the appropriate time to be greeted by the butler — Oh, how the other half live!

The first thing I saw as he showed us into the entrance hall was the biggest Christmas tree I had yet seen...fully decorated. We took our seats in the ballroom and were entertained by an ENSA troop. At the end of the show the seats were rearranged for dancing. I sat and watched because I had never danced before. Without warning, Mrs Fields came to our table, got me up on my feet, clasped me to her (ample) bosom — and waltzed me around the room! It constituted the only time I ever danced with a millionaire’s wife.

Mrs Fields was a well-known and much respected character in the Barnard Castle area, a true lady in every sense. She could often be seen driving around in a horse and trap. Her parties were legendary, and if the butler was required, he was summoned not by the usual rope-pull bell, but by a loud blast on a hunting horn! She was later killed in a tragic road accident. I will never forget her.

My father was classified as being medically unfit for active duty and demobbed. Consequently we were able to return to our house in Norton. And, although we had to spend most nights in the Anderson shelter, it was GREAT to be back home.

One night I had a look out of the shelter and was thrilled to see a German aircraft caught in triple searchlight beams. The guns blazed away and I saw parachutes coming down. I thought the aircraft had been hit and returned to the shelter, probably to relay the news to mum and dad. Suddenly a great explosion rocked the shelter. Soil and earth was blown inside. The ‘parachutes’, which I thought were the crew of the German bomber coming to earth after bailing out of their stricken aircraft, were in fact landmines. The crater of one that fell at nearby Norton Mill would have accommodated a corporation bus!

The war went on and Stockton on Tees did its bit, churning out such things as landing craft and Mosquito light bombers from the local factories. My uncle’s engineering firm, Fred Kidd & Son, was commandeered for war work. Production of specialised aluminium and bronze castings went on there around the clock in a three-shift system. And according to Lord Haw Haw we on Teesside had nothing to fear about the area’s largest industrial complex, the ICI works. That, he informed us, was safe from bombing since they wanted it intact for their own use.

All they had to do, of course, was to win the war...

ADDENDUM: Lartington Hall is now a hotel. And in case anyone reading this is tempted to put up there, be advised that its current tariff provides for a self-catering three-day weekend at the bargain price of…£2,850! How the other half DO live

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