91热爆

this tory has been written onto the 91热爆 Peoples' War site by CSV Story gatherer Linda Finlay on behalf of Mary Jackson. the story has been added to the site with her permission. And Mary Jackson fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

I was nine when war was declared and despatched with a note from my mother to the local Welfare Centre, to collect my baby sister's gas mask. A horrible thing when we unpacked it. We tried it out and Edna yelled blue murder as soon as it closed around her. Heaven knows what would have happened had it been required. We all had out own gas masks and humped them to school every day. We also had air raid shelters built in the school yard and had to learn the drill for using them should the warning go in school hours. As they had no lights in them we all bumped into each other and it turned into gigglging sessions. they also smelt horribly, as if every Tomcat in the district had been in there. A lot of children were evacuated and at first schools were closed. Then as nothing happened for a long time they re-opened and we attended as normal.

i remember hearing a Nazi speech over the radio and the crowds roaring "Zeig Heil" chanting the words again and again. It filled me wit dread and still has the power to do so today. It was played on a TV programme a short time ago and shivers went down my spine and I was back in the verandah in 1939 putting fresh water into a vase of flowers for my Mother.

It was fairly quiet for a few months, the fighting mostly being in Poland and France, then in the spring came the bombing of Rotterda, filled with women, children and old men as the young Dutch men were fighting along their frontiers. then came Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. The nightly bombing started in ernest then.

My father decided on an Anderson shelter and he and several of his brothers dug down three feet into the ground, bolted the galvansied sheets togethr, then threw the surplus soil over the top of the thing. All my uncles had one of these and they worked as a group to erect them for each other. Dad eventually grassed the top of ours so it didn't look any different from the lawn. He alkso dismantled his pride and joy, a quarter sized billiard table made from a large sheet of Welsh slate. With this he made a shield for the doorway of the shelter. He also made dick-boards for the floor and put a bunk on the left and a bench on the right. He also slung a hammock made from strong canvs above the bunk. My sister Joan bagged this and I had to share the bunk with sister Pat, (about three years old) sleeping sardine fashion. My shins used to be black and blue some mornings and we made sure she didn't sleep in her shoes.

At first we used to go to bed as usual and go to the shelter when the sirens wailed. We used to have our tea, then get into our think wincyette pyjamas, to whcih we added cardigan, three quarter length socks and our shoes. coats, pixie hoods nd pillows were to hand by the door and we simply waited for the sirens to go, donned the hats and coats, put the pillow on our heads and ran to the shelter. the sky would be fullof searchlights and the drone of the planes almost overhead. The ack-ack gun at the reservoir would come into action and if it was clear you could see the barrage balloon on the same site. Later on in the year, if the night was clear, a smoke screen would be started. Apparently the bombers used to come in on a radio beam, but the reserevoir and the tramtacks were good guides to the big industrial site at Pype Hayes. the raids lasted televen or twelve hours. My great-grandmother and mother with Edna must have had very little sleep. Dad was never with us. He was either on night shift or fire watching, or out with the rescue wagon as a trained first-aider. We were always scared with the bombs crumping down, especially if they came near what with the rattle of gun-fire and the clatter of shrapnel and other things falling to the ground. However, we were healthy and active and we did get some sleep in spite of the noise and bitter weather. The shelter wasn't heated of course. Too dangerous with us children so the galvansied walls ran with condensation. Dad made a roller blind to some down over the aperture which kept some warm in. You would emerge next morning to find the air sooty, bits all over the garden oath. By the time Mother roused us Dad had already left for work as they started at seven, the fire was lit and there was nice hot water in which to wash and dress. We would brakfast and then go off to school which was just across the main road. There it wasnothing to see the trams all lined up unsable to go anywhere because a pole was down, a track damaged or some unexploded bomb was on the track.

It was so sold that winter that the mid morning milk froze in te bottles. The boys who brought in the crates started to laugh at the sight of the bottle with their tops pushed an inch or som above the rim of the bottle. Normally we would have been told to be quiet but this morning was after a severe raid and they wisely let us llaugh. It was probably the morning after they had dropped a mine or some different kind of bomb which had killed forty and made 800 homeless.

Christmas came and went and the raids continued but as the days lengthened the raids became shorter. We still had raids on a daily basis well into summer. Then the eastern front beame Hitler's priority and planes and men had to be diverted. We were still bombed but not with the ferocity of the winder

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