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'This story was submitted to the People's War site by Rick Allden of the CSV Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Coventry and Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of Nicki Gibson and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions'.

IMPRESSIONS OF A WAR CHILD

1938
We stood in the playground with square khaki cardboard boxes hanging from the canvas straps on our shoulders. Our form teacher ordered us to open the boxes to be shown how to fit the strange contraption that had lain inside. As I fitted the straps of the respirator, the smell of rubber was so strong I could taste it. The sound of my own breathing laboured loud in my ears. I felt as if I was in a diving suit and the air had been cut off. Through the clammy fog of the gas mask, I saw myself flanked on either side by insect aliens in school uniform. I remember vaguely wondering what would happen to those unprotected bodies. Mustard gas burnt, didn’t it? And I imagined us all dissolved into running yellow pus. Thankfully my macabre visions were never realised.

1939-1940
Despite warnings to the contrary, war was slow to start. The first few months of the ‘phoney’ war, as it was dubbed, seemed mainly concerned with fitting blackout linings to curtains to stop the light shining through, criss-crossing windows with wide buff coloured tape, as protection against bomb-blast, and struggling to get used to the blindness of blackout.
Restrictions, such as rationing though soon arrived on the scene, and I suppose shopkeepers, like my parents, much to my future shame, must have been some of the first, black- marketeers, trading freely amongst themselves in merchandise. A pound of butter for example, would be exchanged for say a quarter of bacon, six eggs for a half a pound of sugar. And as in those days, a street would house shops that ranged from a butchers to a jewellers, even clothes could be purchased, with maybe the equivalent value in perishable goods. Those without the means to participate in such barter, suffered extremely lean times.

1940
If the air-raid siren did sound within the first months of hostilities, it turned out to be only a rehearsal. In1940 however, we learned from the wireless that the enemy had begun bombing the big cities, such as London, Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol. We saw cinema newsreels constantly projecting pictures of huge craters, burning buildings and charred bodies being dragged out of smoking rubble. To this day, I still associate the sound of that wailing banshee with death.
Although the time span remains hazy, I identify, more or less, this period with
the first blitz on nearby Coventry. The raid started with an evening visit from a friend and her mother. The siren sounded and Liz and I sprinted upstairs to Mum’s bedroom, so as to have a ringside view of the action. It was bright moonlight, but though we could hear the distinctive zz-zz-zz of enemy planes, (so very different from our own), they were hidden from sight by a low film of cloud. Arcs of searchlight probed the sky, and ack ack guns began to fire, their rattle becoming so powerful, it shook the house.

This story was donated to the People’s War website by Nicki Gibson, of the Leam Writers. If you would like to find out more about Leam Writers call 0845 900 5 300.

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