Brenda Haley -Bomb damage at home

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Mrs Haley and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
I remember when I was young. We were very poor, and I was the youngest of two children born to Hilda and Dennis Hartley, first born was my sister Joyce and I, Brenda was born three years later. Our Dad could turn his hand to anything, including mending shoes, making our dresses and coats, he would decorate and garden, he also kept hens and a goat, so we had eggs and milk. We didn’t get anything much for Christmas as money was very tight, but when I was nine I found a doll in my mum’s wardrobe. I thought it was beautiful, I loved dolls. I used to make my own with pegs and make a dolls bed with a shoebox. Getting back to my story about the doll in the wardrobe, which was supposed to be for Christmas. Every chance I got, I’d go into mum’s bedroom and sneak a look in the wardrobe at my doll. I knew it wouldn’t be for Joyce because she didn’t like dolls. She only ever had one doll, and I accidentally broke its head off. I had only just gone nine at the time when I found the doll and I couldn’t wait for Christmas to arrive.
By this time war had been declared with Germany. Everyone had to take their gas masks round with them. We also had an identity card which we had to carry, with our gas masks, when we went to school. We all had ration books for our food. We were allowed 2oz of margarine and 1.5oz of cheese each week. Sugar was like gold and we were lucky if we managed to get some. There were no bananas or oranges, food was in very short supply and people would queue up for hours for whatever they could get.
On one particular night 12th of December 1940 at 7.45pm there was an air raid. Planes were coming over, and guns in Caulms Wood were shooting at them. I’d been helping mum make a Christmas cake, which was in the big black fire oven.
Nellie Naylor and her sister Mrs Bulmer were in our house that day, so we all went down into our cellar. After a while Nellie said that her husband Harry would be coming home from work, and he wouldn’t know where she was. So we decided to go from our house at 13 North View Savile Town, ‘next door but one’to Nellie’s house to wait for Harry. As we were running to Nellie’s, flares were dropping, guns were firing. It was a nightmare. The sky was red and smoky, and as soon as we reached Nellie’s house, we went straight down into their cellar. Fifteen minutes later Harry arrived home from work and joined us in the cellar. Not long after down came a bomb and dropped on our house that we had just left a short while before. We knew the time of the bomb because my sister’s watch stopped.At that time she was in the scarlet fever hospital.
Harry, Nellie, mum, me and a dog were all unconscious for a while. Harry was the first to come round, then myself, then Nellie and Mrs Bulmer. My poor mother was under all the rubble, we could just see a bit of her face. We thought she was dead. We were buried alive for six to eight hours, hemmed in not being able to move, not knowing if we would get out alive. We were worried that when dad returned home from work he wouldn’t know where the family was. Then Harry heard rescue men shouting, so he had to keep shouting back for them to know where we were. By this time the fire brigade were there, putting the fires out above us. The water was running down into the cellar and Harry had to shout to tell them to stop the water as mum was laid trapped and she would have drowned.
Eventually the A.R.P rescuers came and dug through the railway banking to get to us. They dug a hole the size of an oven door and pushed one of the rescuers through on a plank. My mum was first out, as she was badly injured. They tied her to a plank to drag her out. They placed her on a ladder to wait for the ambulance and put a tin hat on her to protect her from the rubble. Then it was my turn and then the others one by one. When I got out I was sat on a plank in front of the burning wreckage. I didn’t know where mum was or anyone else who had been in the cellar with me. Then a Salvation Army man came and asked me where I lived. I remember pointing to the burning remains and saying, ‘there’. He asked the rescuers if he could take me to his home, which he did and they were so very king. My clothes had to be cut off as I was covered in lime and mortar, dirty and wet just like a slug.
I was bathed two or three times before I was clean. While all this was going on, Dad was working nights at Newsomes in Batley Carr. Joyce was in the scarlet fever hospital. Dad heard during the night that Savile Town had been bombed, so one of his work mates lent him their bike so he could peddle home. By this time the police and A.R.P were everywhere, stopping everyone and asking, “Who goes there, friend or foe?” Eventually he got home to chaos. The road was blocked off, and he had to prove who he was before he was let through to go further down to the bombed area. He told the rescue squad that he was looking for his wife and daughter, the A.R.P men told him they had just found two bodies. They had walked over them thinking they were pillows, but they turned out to be Mrs Scott and her daughter Enid who lived next door to us. Mr Scott was working at his shop, he was a cobbler in Thornhill Lees, his daughter Enid would have been about twenty or so. Then dad had to begin looking for my mum and myself. He eventually found mum in Dewsbury Infirmary. She was very ill with head and spinal injuries. When he started to look for me one of the A.R.P men told him that a Salvation Army man called Mr Shaw had taken me to his house. I remember that he had a daughter called Joyce Shaw. Dad found me and took me to my Auntie Madge and Uncle Victor’s house. They lived on Headfield Road. I had no clothes and dad only had his working clothes on. The next day he came back with a sack of clothes from the American Red Cross. The clearing station was where people’s belongings were taken who had been lost in bombings. I remember dad wearing trousers half way up his legs and I had a coat which was down to my ankles. As my sister Joyce was in the Scarlet Fever Hospital, she only had her nightie.My dad had to ask if they could keep her in longer as we had nowhere to take her.
Dad and I were sleeping in a single bed in my auntie’s box room. She was pregnant and things were a bit cramped, so we moved to my aunt Vera and uncle George’s house at Tingley. Everyone was so kind. Eventually the council gave us a house at Thornhill. We moved in the same day as my mum and Joyce came out of hospital. When we moved in we had no coal and we asked to borrow some from the neighbour, but they said no. It was very upsetting. As the bombing happened on 12th of December I didn’t get any Christmas presents and I was really looking forward to getting the new doll.
My thanks will always be for our friends and relatives who helped in any way after the disaster of the bombing

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