Wrong side of the curtains!

We arrived at Billingham, from Scotland to work at ICI. We had to wait some time before we got our cases, then having recovered them we were to experience 2 more ‘firsts’ — hearing the sound of air raid sirens, and sitting in an air raid shelter. When the sirens sounded we decided to step out a bit to get back to the digs, but we had not gone another 50 yards when we were stopped by a policeman who insisted that we go into the underground shelter which was about 10 yards off the roadside. We tried to tell him that we had to get our new digs just down the road, but to no avail.
Bill led the way down the entrance steps and I stumbled after him. “Just a covered over trench” I thought as we made a sharp right turn and came to a dead end in the almost complete darkness. We felt around and found a place to sit down, one on either side. As we sat down on what seemed to be wooden slats, it was anything but comfortable and the cases didn’t help, so I ended up lifting mine onto my knees.
“I don’t think much of this bloody lark,” muttered Bill. “Too cold and dark!”
“Aye, it’s just like a hole in the ground,” I agreed.
Now no one else had come down into the shelter with us, but I reckoned I could hear other voices.
“Listen! There are other people in here Bill. Can’t you hear them talking?”
Before Bill could reply, someone else came down the steps, stumbled past us, lifted the heavy wooden-slatted black-out curtain and went into the well lit proper shelter. The ‘other voices’ were sitting there in reasonable comfort. We had been sitting outside the curtain, and felt a right pair of yokels!

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