My War Stories

This story as submitted to the People’s War site by Andrew Parsons from Age Concern and has been added to the website on behalf of Isobel Sykes with her permission and they fully understand the site’s terms and conditions.

When the War started I was around 10 years old and I was living in the North East, in the seaside town of Whitley Bay. I remember the day when the War broke out, my sister and I were taking a neighbours newborn baby for a walk in a pram along the fields when the sirens went off. We rushed the baby home, I started to cry at the sounds of the sirens and an ARP officer shouting “stay in your houses, the War has started”

One night during the raids, a particularly noisy one, my mother wouldn’t go into the shelter because it was too cold and wet. Instead we took shelter under our kitchen table made from solid oak or under the stairs. My father returned from ARP duty and said “we’ve gotta get across to the shelter they’re bombing North Shields” (around 4 miles away).
We all got into the Anderson shelter between bombs and Ack-Ack Guns. However my mother then said she'd forgotten something very important, turning to my Father she said “Edward I’ve forgotten my false teeth, I hope I haven’t swallowed them” then he said “He’s dropping bombs not Pork Pies!”

The next morning getting ready for school, we carried on as usual - no sick days for us, my sister put her foot into her shoe and there was the denture! She was made to wear them because there were no others and we had ran out of clothing coupons.

Another incident I would like to mention is that my husband was a Prisoner of War with the Japanese in Hong Kong. However he was quite fortunate in his appearance being short and dark, this saved his life on many occasions as the Japanese didn’t have to look up to him and sometimes even looked down at him. The tall, fair Englishmen were in deep trouble from the word go as they needed more food and the short man was better physically equipped. Although he did get his nose broken, the up-side was that he got into a posh nursing home in Harley Street and got to know a lot of pretty nurses!

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.