大象传媒

The day the war was declared it was a Sunday morning, I was playing in the back yard at home, it was a month before my 10th birthday, I went upstairs to tell her 鈥� she was still in bed 鈥� but she burst into tears. I said 鈥渨hy are you crying?鈥� She said, 鈥渙h you鈥檒l soon find out.鈥� Actually I鈥檓 from Redcar, it鈥檚 a seaside resort, so then we got all the barbed wire on the beach, and on the streets leading to the promenade were big concrete blocks in case there was an invasion it would stop all the tanks going up the streets. And all the amusement parks had blackout curtains so you can imagine the fun we used to have as kids, running in and out, but also we got an influx of RAF personnel who came to Redcar. We lived nearby so they used to pass our house to go to the hotel to get their meals. Then the army came, the town was awash with soldiers, there were army camps, there were big guns at the mouth of the Tees so it was a garrison town really. When the RAF came, people were billoted in private homes, and they had three airmen living with them. When I think about it now, they were so young, coming into the forces when I think now, young men of a similar age, how would they cope.
Then we had air raid shelters built in the back yard, we had a brick shelter in the back yard, but we mainly used to shelter under the stairs, my mother used to have a big tin bath that she used to put the dirty washing in so we used to shelter under that, and we turned the air raid shelter into our den and we had it kitted out with carpet and toys and everything and it used to be a good den for us. At school we had air raid shelters in the school playground and if the sirens went off at 12 midnight it meant that you didn鈥檛 have to go to school the next day. So it was all a big adventure for us, and we didn鈥檛 feel deprived really, because we used to make fudge with dried milk and cocoa powder, and the nearest thing we got to bananas were mashed parsnips with banana flavouring in it 鈥� sounds disgusting now. When we came out of school, we used to just go and get a raw carrot, and we鈥檇 scrape all the mud off it and just chomp on a carrot, I really enjoyed my school dinners, they were always so wholesome and filling鈥� but we had quite a lot of air raids. Actually the planes were coming up the North Sea, up the river Tees at Middlesbrough, so there were a lot of bombing raids. When we did have a bomb that fell on Redcar, and it fell on Coatham road on a private club, and there were quite a few dignitaries and important people who were killed. We lived just off Coatham road and our doctor was killed, but on that particular night, I was at the pictures with my mother, and the siren had gone off but when the bomb fell we just got down on the floor and hid under the sink, but when my twin sister had stayed at home, she was hysterical because she says she saw the silhouette of the plane on the wall 鈥� we used to whitewash the wall, and it was October so it would have been a full moon, so I believe she might have seen it
WE used to go into underground shelters which were in Coatham road, so when the sirens went off at night, you didn鈥檛 want to get out of your warm, cosy bed, so you put our siren suit on which was very much like the snow suits that little ones wear these days, you put your pillow under your arm and you trudged along to the air raid shelter and just lay down on these awful wooden plank seats and tried to sleep. That was very regular, particularly on moonlight nights in the winter months, because my mother used to say, I used to hear an airplane engine, and she used to say that my hearing was so good I could hear setting off from Germany. But the boys used to go looking for shrapnel, and one time, these boys at the golf course at Redcar had all barbed wire on it, obviously where it was, onto the sand dunes. And of course you couldn鈥檛 get golf balls so these boys had crawled through the barbed wire to retrieve some golf balls but what they didn鈥檛 know was that area was mined and they were blown up, so they went round the schools telling all the school children not to go through the barbed wire. But we, really, weren鈥檛 aware of the significance of what was going on when we were kids, and that鈥檚 why now I鈥檓 really absorbed in this programme: DD to Berlin, because it鈥檚 filling in all the blanks and I鈥檓 seeing the side of it my parents would have seen, and all I knew that some friends of ours, her husband was a POW in Japan, and very rarely she鈥檇 get a card in the post from the prisoner of war camp. I鈥檓 glad, in a way, that we were shielded from the horror of it all. It was very frightening but all these soldiers that were passing through, they were obviously going to the war zones but we weren鈥檛 aware of it, and during the war I got my first pair of soled shoes, because you couldn鈥檛 get leather soled shoes and I thought they were wonderful. You couldn鈥檛 get wool, and I once knitted a jumper out of loads of hanks of wool. Out back there was a family with six kids, they had loads of sweetie coupons, so they would sell them if we ran out of sweetie coupons or if mam or dad were having a night in, they鈥檇 send us over to see if they had any sweety coupons to sell. We used to get marzipan teacakes, my dad鈥檚 favourite. And black bullets, which were black mints鈥�. But the fish and chip shops were open, 2pence for chips and a penny for chips with all the scraps. Along the promenade at Redcar, underneath there you used to be able to sit and look out to sea. Well they filled all the openings with sandbags but there was no lighting, but the kids , as a dare, we would dare one another to go in at one end and find their way out of this thing in the pitch dark and come out of the other end. The stink was terrible. We didn鈥檛 often use those.
I had an aunt who lived in Stockton, we used to go through on the train and we used to pass the airfield and see all the planes. I was at my aunts when it was announced that Japan had surrendered, and we all got dressed up and went down to Stockton high street where everyone was celebrating. I actually had an aunt and a cousin who worked and were killed in an air raid. My uncle, my mother鈥檚 brother, had gone to see their sister at Hartlepool, and she persuaded him to stay another night. But there was an air raid that night, and a mine landed on the house and killed them. My aunt, two uncles and my cousin, Kenneth, ten year old, the whole family was wiped out. The sad thing is, and this is why it鈥檚 so important for us to give our recollections, my mother and all my relatives who were much older than us, there鈥檚 only two of them left now, one of them has Alzheimer鈥檚, and there鈥檚 nobody I can ask because it was their father who was killed, but I don鈥檛 know the dates or anything, coz I was just told as a kid. It鈥檚 so important to have records of these things. But later on in the war when all the polish waffs came to Redcar and were billoted in the houses around the sea front. And I think it was when Poland was liberated, I learned two words of Polish, which I thought was very good! So when they went and then when the war was nearing it鈥檚 end, Redcar got an influx of POWs, Italian first, and they were allowed to walk around freely but they had this uniform with marks on the back. And the Italian prisoners of war went into one particular ice cream shop. But when the German POWs came as well as them, there was an awful lot of animosity between the two. I went in the army when I was 18, and the army officer used to ask if I鈥檇 seen the guns. But the look out stations are still there. I have lots of happy memories about the war years and some sad ones as well. But we befriended one of the German POWs and used to take him to the pictures. He was from Hanover, and I was learning German, parrot-fashion. When I joined the army, he was repatriated, but my foster parents kept in touch with him and I still have all the letters we used to send each other, and he said that the majority of Hanover was flattened. Twenty years ago I joined a group called 鈥淔riendship force鈥� and I went to Hanover and was hosted by this lady who鈥檚 in her nineties now. And I met up again with Hans Loson, and he could still speak English and could still write English, but I couldn鈥檛 write it, because I don鈥檛 know the grammar, I鈥檓 still the same 鈥� I had no idea that there are differences in dialects, I went to visit someone in Berlin and they said 鈥淵ou speak very good German from Hanover.鈥� But with the air raid shelters, they didn鈥檛 get rid of them, they just grassed over them, like a load of hills. so I wrote an essay on my visit to Hanover and entered it into a competition and I got second prize. When Hans was a POW he made me a bracelet of plastic and some slippers of string, but it was good for me to talk to these, to my german friends about it and the hardships that they had gone through as civilians in Germany, so that鈥檚 why I am trying to get all my stories down on paper for my grandchildren, like my life story as they only know me as an old person so this is what I鈥檓 trying to do now, I鈥檓 on the computer on a wide learning curve. I鈥檓 75 now and there鈥檚 not many of us left so I think it鈥檚 wonderful what they 大象传媒 is doing.

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