Tricycle

Disclaimer: This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV on behalf of Malcolm Addey and has been added to the site with her permission. Malcolm Addey fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My sixth birthday was on September the 1st, 1939. The present I got for my birthday was this shiny brand spanking new tricycle. Two days later the big thing happened and war was declared on Germany. We declared war because they did something we didn’t like, which was invade Poland. Anyway. I was happily bopping around the street with my newly acquired tricycle. My old auntie who I was living with in Hull, Yorkshire came rushing out frantically shouting “Get inside, get inside — the Germans are coming! The Germans are coming!”. She had been through World War I and she was absolutely convinced that at any moment that the Germans would be descended in their parachutes; and I’d better get inside otherwise they’d get me. We were in fact by the ELA, that was called the phony war of course where nothing happened for year and I suppose a year later when the big bombing came in 40 or 41 I suppose, we were in fact bombed out in that very same house. We had an air raid shelter fortunately and we just missed it by maybe about 100 yards — this huge what they called land mines, I think they were 1000 pound bombs. It landed just across the street and the entire street was completely wiped out. We went out the following morning and it was all gone — all the buildings had gone and the people in them. It was really quite a terrible sight. But when you are six or seven years old you don’t see it in the same light; it’s really quite fun in a way because it’s something that’s happened and something exciting that’s happened. But it’s not very exciting to see a smouldering building and people being carried off on stretchers. A little candy store across the street, right across the street, completely gone. I’ve been back there and it’s like someone chopped off the end of the street and cemented it up. That use to be the little candy store that I use to go to to get candy. There was no more bombing after that, later on came the V2s but we were lucky. I have no idea what happened to my tricycle. I am sure I was out there the next day when they didn’t come.

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