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I was eleven years of age when war was declared in September 1939 and due to embark on my Grammar School education.

An early memory in 1940 or 1941 was sheltering under the stairs of my sister’s house in Durham Road, Spennymoor with her young son born in October 1939, her husband out on A.R.P. duty and the sirens having sounded, hearing the throb of an aeroplane engine overhead and then a heavy thud nearby, later discovering that Tudhoe Co-op had been hit by incendiary bombs and was ablaze.

Later in the war we had incendiaries dropped near Evenwood and a huge bomb crater or two also, but the incendiaries failed to ‘go off’ — they were stamped “Czechoslovakia” and our allies there under German occupation had produced many “duds”.

A favourite young cousin in the Navy was reported lost at sea in Convoy on the way to Murmansk (Russia). In icy cold conditions they stood no chance of survival in the sea. At school in Assembly I found it impossible to sing with the other girls the Hymn “Eternal Father Strong to Save whose arm doth bind the restless wave … oh hear us when we cry to thee for those in peril on the sea”.

In 1944 I read a book “The Last Enemy” (death) by Richard Hillary. I suppose as an emotional 16 year old I was very touched by this account from first hand experience of a young man leaving Oxford University and its very easy lifestyle too go into the R.A.F. and become a spitfire pilot. He ejected from his plane into the sea, very badly burned, and described most graphically all the treatments and hospitalisation he had to endure month after month to be made to look anything like the handsome young man he had been on recruitment. Most if not all of his friends were shot down and died — it was a most poignant story beautifully told and had a profound effect on me. What was to be the ultimate end of the war, and what would be the future for the young of that time? At 17 I would face the possibility of conscription into the Forces; fortunately the war in Europe ended the following year, my brother returned safely from his duties on R.A.F. Radar, the 1945 Election was held and the future looked brighter.

The above was prompted by a lecture by Professor Bill Williamson at the Town Hall in the morning of 22nd June 2005.

Disclaimer: Story submitted by Gillian Wales at Bishop Auckland Town Hall on behalf of Nancy Bell from Evenwood.

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