NextBackI lived in Astwood Bank, during the second world war, I was only a young girl at the time. We used to have to take our gas masks to school each day, when we first had them we had to keep them in a cardboard box, but as the war went on, our moms bought us leather boxes to keep them in which was much better.
The masks were tested each week at school, they did this by putting blotting paper on the end of the down tube. We didn’t mind having the masks at all, we saw it as a bit of fun.
The bombers used to fly over most evenings, the engines had a sound of there own, like a zoom…zoom…zoom noise that was always scary. Once a bomb was dropped in sambourne, we used to go to the top of New Road, and look across the country, you could see the orange glow from the fires from where the bombs have been dropped. Most people built shelters in their back garden, these were called Anderson shelters.
We had to make our own blackout curtains, and of a night time, the wardens would bang on the door if we had any light showing through. The food was severely rationed, and we grew a lot of our own vegetables. You’d hear of something special come in at the CO OP, or the butchers sometimes, and we’d all run up there as fast as we could, so as not to miss our bit.
My gran had an RAF airman billeted to live in her house, she had no choice in the matter, but the airmen were nice, they used to give us children a few sweets. We heard about the end of the war on the radio, everyone celebrated in the streets of the village, but it took sometime to get back to normal.
