91热爆

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Mrs Taylor and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
Thomas Carroll was my mother鈥檚 father. He was Irish and his father, Terence, came over to work around 1900 when many Irishmen came to this country. (The first ones in the 18th century, to dig canals, and in the 19th century to work on railways). Terence and Thomas had a trade as plasterers and lime-washers and employed about 6 men. I never knew my great grandfather, but the bill-heads (invoices) still had 鈥淭erence Carroll & Son鈥� as a heading. My grandfather was helped by his son, Terence (my Uncle Teddy). By law, mills and rag warehouses had to be lime-washed inside to help keep down insects and vermin. Dewsbury and Batley are 鈥渟hoddy鈥� towns. A way of recycling old woollen garments, combining the resulting fibres with some new wool to make a new and cheaper material called shoddy had been found by a man called Benjamin Law, and this made Dewsbury and Batley very prosperous, especially as the cheap fabric was used to supply uniforms to both sides in the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries. Woollen rags were imported from all over the world and some of them had insects in them, (we had large brightly coloured specimens in a glass case at school). The finished shoddy was exported all over the world, and the coming of the railways, also in the 19th Century made worldwide distribution possible.
The lime washing business was certainly in operation in World War 1. I was told about food parcels being sent over from Ireland to Grandad, when food was short here during that war.
The Irish immigrants occupied two areas in Dewsbury, Westtown and Batley Carr. They were Roman Catholic and were rather looked down upon as rough and inclined to drink a lot (many of them were single men or husbands who had left families in Ireland). Many of them lived in lodging houses. I had three friends whose mother and father kept a lodging house. The men slept in long white washed rooms we鈥檇 now call dormitories and for a reasonable charge they could get bed and breakfast.
We lived where Westtown started in a yard, bordered at the top by a road called Webster Hill and at the bottom, by the River Calder, Mum and Dad and I lived in a house on the riverside. Nana and Grandad lived in a cottage at the top of the yard, next door but one to Uncle Teddy and Auntie Clara and a daschund called Jet. Jet learned his way to the ice cream shop in Dewsbury and sat up outside until someone bought him an ice cream.
The railway station was just up the road and the railway bridge crossed Webster Hill at the entrance to our yard. The railway line runs to Huddersfield and Manchester, the same one which took Rachel for interview in Manchester.
Next to us on the riverside was a bicycle shop (push bikes were very popular then) and the Hargreaves family who owned it lived in the cottage behind.
Because I had missed so much schooling, my Dad went to my school and begged some old 11+ examination papers, which I had to do every night before my 11+. I鈥檓 sure he was responsible for me passing for our local Grammar School.
I was eleven when the war started and seventeen when it finished.
In 1939, Grandad had a stroke and died 2 weeks later. Our first air raid of the war was during this time and he was very frightened, because he was helpless in bed. He had bought me my new school uniform but he died before I started at the school. We had holiday until air raid shelters were built. When half of them were finished, we went half time, half of us in the mornings and half in the afternoons.
Anderson shelters were delivered to householders and we shared with the Crawshaws next door. They were made of corrugated metal sheets and the men dug a deep hole to wedge them in, so that we went down into them. The children thought it was fun getting up out of bed when the sirens sounded, going into the shelter and having a singsong. If the all clear sounded after 2 am we got the next morning off school. Hurray!!!. The grown ups weren鈥檛 nearly so pleased.
Women were being called upon to do war work and fill the places of the men who had gone into the forces. Some young men were given the choice of the army or the mines. The boys who went down the mines were called Bevin Boys after the minister who had suggested it. Mum was sent to British Belting & Asbestos in Cleckheaton (they made belting used to drive the machinery in factories), but it was so noisy that she left after half a day and found herself a job at James Austin鈥檚 steelworks as a crane driver. She wore denim boiler suits and a blue turban to hide her hair for safety. She looked very strange to us, because ladies didn鈥檛 wear trousers then. She then trained as an oxy-acetylene welder making pontoon (Baillie) bridges, some used in the D-Day landings in France to cross rivers where the bridges had been blown up.
Uncle Teddy鈥檚 marriage had broken down, so he came to live with us until his second marriage. My Grandma (dad鈥檚 mum) also came to live with us, and she kept house, while mum was working. During the London Blitz and Doodlebug (unmanned flying bomb) raids, we also had evacuees, Mr and Mrs Shirt and their son, Ronnie, who was a year younger than me They family did not understand our phrases such as 鈥渕ash the tea鈥� and 鈥渟ide the table鈥�. We also had a younger girl called Audrey, but she was homesick and went home.
We were very squashed and we were given mattresses, which we slept on on the bedroom floor, ladies in one room and men in the other. They had sheltered in the tube stations during the very bad air raids, hundreds of them, night after night and they had nits and scabies, which were passed onto us when they came here. We all had to be treated for them and it was very embarrassing at school.
During this time, we had to carry our gas masks everywhere with us. They came in cardboard boxes with a string loop to carry them over your shoulder. All the windows had black out curtains and not even a chink of light must show or the air raid warden came knocking. We had torches to see our way around as the streets had no lights, but we had to mask the glass, so that only a small hole was left for the light to shine through. Many foods were rationed and we had ration books which were registered with the grocer and butcher of your choice and they stamped the book each week or cut coupons out. Your Grandad looked around for people who didn鈥檛 care for sweets and he bought their sweet coupons 鈥攁s you would expect. We got food from America, especially dried eggs, which came as a powder to beat up with water and cook like a pancake and they were quite nice.
The Shirt family had other members of their family billeted nearby and they had often taken part in concerts when they were at home, in the East End of London. The bus company where Dad worked had its own brass band and he had several friends interested in forming a concert party to entertain the troops or to raise money for the war effort. As we had a piano, they practised at our house. We were so squashed it was standing room only, but it was fun.
Dad was in the LDV 鈥� Local Defence Volunteers, but they had the nickname of Look, Duck and Vanish. It later became the 91热爆 Guard, like Dad鈥檚 Army on TV.
When I was sixteen and in the fifth form we were allowed to fire-watch, in turn, so that if any incendiary bombs fell, they could be extinguished (we never saw any thank goodness). The school medical room had two beds, where we slept, and staff firewatchers slept in the staff room, in turn. We had very few bombs dropped locally.
About this time a school party accompanied by 4 teachers went potato picking outside Ripon to help the war effort. Ripon was a garrison town and American soldiers were stationed there. Gangs of Italian prisoners-of-war also picked potatoes in the same fields. We stayed in a church hall with a corrugated iron roof, which sounded like thunder when it rained. The iron cooking range was outside the back door and we washed out there too. Our cookery teacher cooked for us and we took turns to make sandwiches for packed lunch on the following day. We had weird fillings, due to rationing. I remember date sandwiches and beetroot sandwiches.
The following year we went fruit picking near Stratford-On-Avon. The teachers were very good and made it as much like a holiday as possible, when we weren鈥檛 working. We visited the Memorial Theatre to see Shakespeare plays and we went to Evesham and the Cotswolds, as well as Shakespeare鈥檚 house, Ann Hathaway鈥檚 Cottage and Mary Arden鈥檚 House (Shakespeare鈥檚 wife and mother) in Stratford.
Grandma Nelson came to live with us during the war. She had lived with her older sister-in-law but Aunt Sarah had died. Grandma was about 60 but always seemed older (Grandma鈥檚 did in those days). She was born between Sheffield and Barnsley and her sisters and brother stayed in the Barnsley area. I think Grandma must have moved into our area when she went into service. Her mother died when she was 10 and she had to take on the household tasks of cooking and brewing, washing and cleaning for her father, older brother and two younger sisters. Tripp, her brother, was a great help at this time. Tripp and her father were miners, so the washing would be hard, and the weak beer she brewed was for them to take with their 鈥榮nap鈥� (food) down the pit. Her younger sisters were Emma and Alice and they both went into service when they were old enough.
At the end of the war, school children were given a message from the King which said:-
Today, as we celebrate victory, I send this personal message to you and all the other boys and girls at school. For you have shared in the hardships and dangers of a total war and you have shared no less in the triumph of the Allied Nations
I know you will always feel proud to belong to a country which was capable of such supreme effort; proud too, of parents and elder brothers and sisters who by their courage, endurance and enterprise brought victory. May these qualities be yours as you grow up and join in the common effort to establish among the nations of the world unity and peace.

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