The war was on when I started school, and if the siren went off to signal an air raid we had to pick up a small mat which was on a hook at the side of our infant school tables and then form a line, and quietly file out to the air raid shelter in the boys playground, where we sat and sang songs like “One man went to Mow”. Serena Hunt b 1939
There was a great big air raid shelter in the boys playground next to the houses, by the school garden, that ran from the toilet block, right the way down to the wall. It was a huge air raid shelter. You used to go to school with your gas mask, and on the edge of your desk there was a little tiny mat hanging there. The siren went, you grabbed your gas mask and mat and marched across to the shelter. Nick Chandler b 1937
Tag Archives: gas mask
Pat Burt, Annette Haynes: WWII air raid sirens
Kevack across to North House
I remember hearing war had broken out on the radio. We lived in the stone cottage ‘Kevack’ in the High Street. During the early part of the war when the air raid sirens went, we used to rush over and down into the cellars of North House, but that was only for a short while until we had the Morrison table shelter delivered – I think we had that by 1942. Pat Burt
I was away in Castle Bromwich, near Birmingham, when war broke out. I was staying with a friend of my mother’s, I called her my aunt – she wanted to adopt me. I was so worried because my mother couldn’t get me a gas mask because I wasn’t at home, and my ‘aunt’ couldn’t get a gas mask for me. I had to come back home of course.
We had an Anderson shelter in the garden. I remember my brother saying, ‘If I’m going to be killed, I’ll be killed in my bed. I’m not going down to the shelter.’
Annette Haynes