The Hopkins Family - Part Two

This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Tim Davoile on behalf of Doris Hopkins and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I can remember them announcing (BBC radio announcement by Chamberlain) the outbreak of war. It was on a dinnertime and they just said, “we are at war”. They then told us what would happen, how we would have the black out and how nobody was to talk pessimistically. You’d got to be careful not to talk any secrets, or anything like that, because of any enemy that might be listening. They could put you in prison for that, and of course they did round up a lot of foreigners. Which of course, could have been spies as far as they knew.

For the first 12 months it wasn’t so bad, but then it started. Mother would be the first in from work and she would make sandwiches for us all. Then when we got home we would collect our sandwiches, get on our bikes and ride to one of the air raid shelters. Sometimes we would go to the one on the Foleshill Road, where they kept the council carthorses and that would be absolutely packed with people. There would be people being sick, people would be fainting and they’d all be lying on the floor. You’d got to step over them and see if you could find a place to settle. There were no pillows and things like that, and once you’d found a place, that’s where you would stop until the all clear went.

If the all clear went when we were working, at first they use to say, “go down to the shelter”, which we did. Well then, when it got a bit much, they just said “carry on working and we’ll tell you when there’s a threat of it over our heads and we’ll tell you when to go”. So that was how it was for work.

The sirens mostly went at nighttime. I know we never had a night in our beds for a six-week stretch at one time. And when you did have a night when you thought you’d go to bed you’d have to lie on top of the bed in your clothes, ready to run down stairs and go for a shelter.

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