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I can remember when the war was declared, a Sunday morning at about eleven o'clock. I was in the kitchen at the time peeling potatoes when my mother came in and told me what she had just heard on the radio. I was only eleven at the time, and I remember feeling slightly concerned, and hoping that the Germans were not coming.

Shortly afterwards ration books were given out along with gas masks, which we had to take everywhere with us. When the sirens went off you knew what was coming, an air raid and it was very frightening. During the raid some people tried to lift the mood by singing and making jokes. Alfreton was hit during the bombing, mostly in fields, however there were casualties, a firewatcher was killed.

There were coupons and rations for everything and sometimes you were able to buy extra coupons off of some people so that you could get what you needed. Clothing coupons were handy as you only had you work clothes, and you did not have a different set of clothes for everyday and then you had clothes for a Sunday.

There were lots of soldiers in Alfreton and I remember the large house next door being taken over by the ATS. While they were there I remember the Princess Royal coming and we had a grandstand view of her.

At the beginning of the war they closed the school for a short time and lessons were at Cresy Fields, which was owned by a respectable couple. My brother went to a boy鈥檚 school and that was also closed during the war and my brother had to attend another school. I left school at fourteen and I went to work at the dairy.

My oldest brother had to go to war and I remember my mother and father both being upset as they had both lost a brother during the First World War. Some of the other people who went to war, who we knew from around Alfreton, never came back including close friends of the family. My brother used to write to the family twice a week just to let us know that he was all right. However, coming up to D-Day we did not hear from him for a couple of weeks, but during this time my mother feared the worst. It turned out he was in Belgium part of the D-Day landing.

I remember prior to D-Day there were hundreds of tents throughout Alfreton, full of people making their way south. Also, there were tanks passing through and I remember when we were closing the dairy they were still passing through.

I can not remember where I was when it was declared that the war had ended, I was seventeen at the time and the word about the war ending soon got round to everybody. My friends and I took a trip down to Matlock Bath and had a picnic a few days later. However, I remember that we could not get a bus back to Alfreton, as they were full, so we had to walk to Matlock and queue for two hours for a bus home. There were a few street parties with dancing in the street but because we could not get back from Matlock we did not go to them.

The general atmosphere was very relaxed and I wondered when the rationing was going to stop. Rationing continued for a couple of years, when I was twenty-two I left my job at the dairy and went to work at the Co-op and some types of food were still rationed such as sugar and butter.

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