Mrs Martin
Stuart Carr
Len Winter
Mrs Merial J Dunn
Norman & Jean Long
Donald Robson
Ken Thorley
A 'Country Woman'
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I was 8 years old when I was evacuated to York. The day we went was
one of the saddest days of my life. To have to leave my Mum, Dad, two
brothers and a sister, and to see my Mum and others on the kerb edge
crying, was heart breaking.
However, we went, and arrived at York. Some people made us welcome,
but not everyone did. I was billeted with a kind lady. She spoilt me.
But some evacuees were told to go home, even by children.
After two years away I came home to my family. I saw my Dad cry when
he saw me. But my welcome home present was a baby sister, Anna, and
to this day we are sisters and great pals.
I was six when the war
started. I remember walking to school in Middlesbrough with my gas mask
in its little cardboard box on a string hung over my shoulder. If the
siren went during classes we all walked in a neat crocodile, about a quarter
of a mile to the secondary school, where we sat in the cellars until the
all clear sounded. Air raids were popular, especially during maths.
I remember being woken up in the night and running down the garden to
our Anderson Shelter, and listening to the pitter-patter of shrapnel from
anti aircraft shells which had burst overhead. Next day we collected shrapnel
and tried to get a piece big enough to sell or trade at school.
There was a dog, a few houses away from us, whose ears were far better
than the official air raid warnings. If he started barking we would go
to the shelter and sure enough, five minutes later, the siren would sound.
As we got used to the air raids we would sleep through them. A warm bed
was better than a cold damp shelter. However, a neighbour awoke one morning
to find the nose cone of an anti aircraft shell sticking through the ceiling
directly above his head. He got up rather quickly.
Later, air raids became less and my main memories are of seeing our own
aircraft limping back in the early mornings. Once a four engine bomber,
probably a Halifax, came over our house very low, heading for Thornaby
airfield. The fuselage was like a pepper pot, full of holes. He was flying
on one and a half engines, visibly sagging in the air. Three red flares
went up from the airfield, he disappeared below the roofs of the houses,
there was no big cloud of smoke, so we think he got her down safely.
On VE Day we had a street party with spam sandwiches. We seemed to have
spam with everything!
I joined up in 1942. I was a driver in the Royal Ordnance Corps. I was first sent to Glasgow where I was called a Sassenach until I pointed out that I am Welsh. My brother was in the Royal Navy. He was lost in the English Channel when his ship was sunk by E-boats.
In early 1945 I was in North Germany. We were keeping the front line troops supplied with food, fuel and ammunition. Driving in convoys, following the lorry in front. Because the forward troops advanced so quickly it was difficult to keep up. Everything was on the move. The German army was collapsing, but pockets of soldiers left behind kept fighting. They had not surrendered and fired at us as we drove by.
In April 1945, I think it was the 13th; I was with the troops that went into Bergen- Belsen. I stayed there for the next few weeks.
Belsen was terrible. There were thousands of dead and dying people. Disease was rife, especially in the women’s camp. Luckily I had been inoculated, and I did not become unwell. I remember a lady Labour MP visited and I am sure she became unwell after her visit and died. They said she caught her illness there.
When we arrived Belsen had no water. The Germans had cut off the supplies. We brought in water in tankers. The inmates were so desperate for water that before we got properly organized they rushed the tankers and pushed them over.
We soon started getting conditions better. The dead were buried. The former prisoners were fed and given medical help. Conditions improved. The medical officers ordered us to be careful and not give anyone too much food. They had been so starved that if they had been given too much food it would have killed them.
Early on we rounded up the people who had run the camp, Germans and also Rumanian guards. We made them show respect to the inmates and then handed them over to be dealt with. They thought we were going to shoot them. We spoke about doing it, but we would not act like them.
I wish we had got to Belsen earlier. If we had we would have saved more lives. I think Anne Frank was there and died about two weeks before we arrived.
I remember seeing few officers while we were at Belsen; it was us ordinary soldiers, and the medics, who worked in the camp to start to get things right.
Just before the war ended we moved on. I was at Luneburg Heath when the war ended, close to where Montgomery accepted the German surrender. On VE Day a Colonel came round. He gave out some stripes and gave us all a drink to celebrate. The drink wasn’t special; it was just like coloured water. We didn’t stop work that day; there was too much to do.
I married a Beverley girl in 1945 and stayed in the Army. I was sent back to Germany and remained there until 1947. I was stationed, over the next two years, all over Northern Germany. I got to know the Germans well. I have no hatred for the ordinary Germans, they were alright. They were just lead by evil people. As for the people we saved and helped I wish, as I say, we had got there earlier and saved more; but I was still in the Army when some of our lads got killed in Palestine and I still cannot understand that.
I often remember Belsen. I can’t forget it. I remember the smell most of all. We never got any thanks for what we did. The one extra ration they gave us, while we were there, was extra cigarettes; we thought they gave us them to try to take away the smell; but it didn’t work.
When I left the Army in 1947 we settled in Beverley and I have live here ever since.
I was sent, one of eight WRNS, to Bletchley Park to see whether we could do the job. This was concerned with the cracking of the Enigma Code, and from eight of us the number grew to a couple of thousand.
I met and married Thomas DD Dunn DFC while I was there, and was demobbed in October 1945.
Thinking about VE day reminds me of two stories when Jeanne and me were in the Royal Navy. I was on HMS Mallard, K42, Corvette, Kingfisher Class 1942-1946, Jeanne was an Officers Cook, stationed ashore.
In 1944 somewhere in the North Sea nicknamed E-boat alley, the minesweepers were out making the way clear for a convoy to Russia. My job was ASDIC, underwater radar, and I was below deck listening for submarines and E-boats, very fast German torpedo boats. I heard a torpedo charging along through the water and immediately signalled the bridge. More torpedoes, then several loud noises, quickly followed the first torpedo.
Upon our return to Port, much later, we found that five minesweepers were sunk that night, the Red Gauntlet being one of them. I don’t remember the names of the others.
The same night Jeanne, who was in the WRNS from 1942-45, and was stationed at Harwich working as a Cook, was called away from her duties to assist the Medical Officers with many wounded, some with limbs missing and shrapnel wounds.
One of the more light-hearted incidents occurred at Parkstone Quay, Harwich. Every two weeks when we were paid we had to fall in on deck. The Officer on Deck had a card table in front of him and alongside the table stood the Coxswain. When your name was called you stepped up, took off your cap and placed it on the table. The money was then placed into your cap along with some vouchers for chocolate, cigarettes etc. Able Seaman Sandy Sanderson was called forward to take up his money but instead of his usual £2.00+ he picked up one ten-shilling note (the equivalent of 50p). Apparently some adjustment had been made to his pay, which he had forgotten about.
Sandy was so disgusted that he took his cap, picked up the ten-shilling note and threw it on deck – at this moment a gust of wind blew it over the side into the harbour. Sandy immediately removed his overalls and dived over the side and swam to retrieve his ten-shilling note. He got the note and put it in his mouth which impeded his breathing somewhat so his shipmates (myself included) threw him a heaving line, which he grabbed, and started to pull him in. As he was pulled along in the water his underpants came down around his ankles (Sandy couldn’t pull them up since he was hanging onto the rope). As we continued to haul him in a party of WRENS (lady sailors) went by in a motor boat and as they saw what was happening they all started laughing, cheering and waving at Sandy’s predicament.
On VE Day I was at an airfield in the countryside on the Dutch-German frontier. We were there getting the airfield back into operational service. We had no special celebration. Two days after VE Day we went into Eindhoven and joined in the party. The locals had been celebrating for two days and on the third day, the day we joined in, they ran out of beer. The Dutch were overjoyed that the war was over.
I was 17 when war began and I enlisted in 1941. I was in Beverley in those early years. I landed in Normandy in June 1944 but my war did not end on VE Day. I was in the first group of British soldiers to enter Berlin. I now want to record my memories of those years.
As regards Beverley between 1939 and 1941 I want to set down my memories of air-raids. Communications were basic in those days. The first we knew an air-raid was expected was that the searchlights lit up and started waving in the sky. Perhaps half an hour later the sirens would go off to give the official warning of the raid.
The first local raid was at RAF Leconfield. Me and my friends went to look at the damage. The bombs, which were anti-personnel bombs, were full of shrapnel. They fell to the North of the airfield and killed several sheep. Later I went to the pictures and what we had seen was shown on the newsreels.
The Germans made three separate attempts to bomb Victoria Barracks, where Morrison’s is now. On the first two occasions they mistook the Broadgates hospital for the Barracks. They dropped bombs called landmines, which were on parachutes, and these, on both occasions, fell into the field opposite what used to be Walkington garage. On the second of these two raids the blast from the landmines somehow reflected into Beverley town centre and blew out lots of windows. I was in the town centre at the time and I remember the ARP man making us run to the shelter with lots of broken glass under our feet. All the windows in the marketplace were broken.
The third raid on the Barracks was the worst night for Beverley. The sirens went off. There were lots of low flying aircraft noises. The planes were flying unusually low. We knew they were German aircraft because of their engine noise. A series of flares went off over the Barracks and lit up the whole of Beverley. There was lots of anti-aircraft fire and big explosions. There was a huge landmine explosion and they got the main gate. Canadian soldiers were at the Barracks but we were told only the guard at the gate was killed; the soldiers had been warned, dived into slit trenches and had escaped the blast.
I remember a day light raid on Hodgsons tannery. One bomb fell at the back of Hodgsons, and there are still shrapnel marks on some of the houses in Flemingate from that bomb. The other bomb, because it was dropped from low level, did not explode. It bounced and came to rest in the middle of Sparkmill Lane just to the South of the bridge over the stream. The area was cordoned off. I wanted to see the bomb so I got into the stream at England Springs, waded along to Sparkmill lane, climbed out and went to see it. The bomb had hit the hedge, and a thrushes nest, and killed the thrush and her chicks. The bomb was in the middle of the lane and I stood on it.
When this attack happened the gates at Flemingate crossings were shut. There were people waiting at the crossing gate and the Germans machine gunned them. My friend’s father was killed.
On another occasion a train was stopped at Leconfield station and perhaps half a dozen people were killed when that train was machine gunned.
The Germans also dropped bombs at the back of Cherry Tree Lane near Greenwood Avenue. The blast from that bomb, as I recall, burst upwards and did relatively little damage.
At that time I was working for the Hull builders Robinson and Sawdon. I biked to work each day. Most of our work was in Hull clearing away bomb damage. Conditions in Hull were terrible and most the city centre was more or less flattened. Every building was damaged except one. It was like a miracle, Hull Royal Infirmary was untouched. Over Hull there were anchored many barrage balloons. In a storm these were sometimes struck by lighting and I can remember seeing, on occasions, them fall to the earth in flames. Hull had many raids and night after night there was a huge red glow in the sky. I remember, on one occasion, a bomb damaged a petrol tank behind the bus station. Petrol leaked into the drains. It exploded and the road from the bus station to Beverley Road was lifted up in a ridge.
At that time I lived in Keldgate me and my Dad used to go up onto the Westwood to see what was happening. My Dad thought it was safer being outside than inside but he was not right because the biggest danger in raids was being hit by falling bits of shrapnel from anti-aircraft shells.
I enlisted in 1941 because I wanted to be in the Air Force. Before D-Day I was posted all over Britain. By D-Day I was part of the Second Tactical Air Force. This was made up of ground attack air planes like Mosquito’es. Our job was to take over captured German airfields and get them operational so that our fighter bombers could use them. I landed in France in a LCA (landing craft assault) about a week after D-Day and at night. The first airfield we were ordered to get back working had been so fought over that it was unserviceable.
We then moved through Northern France and Belgium, close behind the front line, from airfield to airfield getting them back into working order. We would check for mines and booby traps. We would get the electric and water supplies working. We would clear away the damaged German planes and so on.
In late 1944 we were in Belgium and I remember seeing the flame trails of V2 rockets in the distance, heading towards London. The Belgians were still very afraid of the Germans. At the time of the Battle of the Bulge the attitude of the Belgians changed and they became very wary. They were not confident the Germans had been beaten and thought they would return. However we had no doubts that they were beaten.
When we advanced through Holland we went through Nijmegen and Arnhem. There were still parachutes in trees and graves by the road with helmets on the top. The Dutch had put flowers on the British graves, German graves had none.
As I said, on VE Day nothing was laid on for us, but we had our celebrations a few days later.
A couple of weeks after VE Day we received new orders. Our unit was completely mobile and we were ordered to paint on the side of our vehicles the letters BACB. This stood for British Air Command Berlin. We were issued with special identity cards written in English and Russian. Mine is on display in Elvington museum. We then set off to travel to Berlin. The journey took 3 days. The roads were clogged with refugees, and foreign workers who had worked in Germany and were trying to walk home. Many of the people were short of food and although we had been ordered not to fraternize we gave out food, especially to children.
We went into the Russian sector and the Russians were immediately suspicious of us. We got to Gatow airfield and the Russians made us camp in open ground at the far end of the airstrip. I was in the third lorry that went into Berlin that day. As we were the first British soldiers to enter the city I know I was the first person from Beverley to get to Berlin, and I suspect I was the first Yorkshireman. I was in Berlin from June 1945 to around September 1945. The Russians were suspicious of us and not particularly friendly. Most of them had Tommy-Guns. The streets in Berlin were almost completely empty.
We went all over Berlin, the Unter-Den-Linden, everywhere. We went to the public buildings that were left standing and I climbed onto the balcony from which Hitler gave his big speeches.
I had seen in Hull what damage heavy bombing could do to a city but the damage in Berlin was far far greater. Berlin was much bigger than Hull and the damage was huge. For many buildings the walls were still standing but the whole of the insides had been burnt out. Just the walls remained as an empty shell. Fire damage was worse than blast damage. Nothing could be salvaged from a building that had been burnt out. Many building had a black cross of wood outside; this meant there were still thought to be people dead in the cellars. There was no postage system in Berlin, so people trying to trace relatives and friends would stick letters on buildings and walls where people thought there was a connection.
The only way in and out of Berlin was by air. My group kept Gatow open for the British to fly in and out. When they formally announced that the British had arrived in Berlin I was back home on leave after having being there for some weeks. I had been flown out in a Lancaster. I flew back again in a two seater Hurricane which was used to deliver mail.
After my time in Berlin I was posted in Hamburg, which also had terrible bomb damage. Then, in late 1945, I was de-mobbed and returned to Beverley.
One particular night my Dad had come home dressed in his Warden’s outfit, gas mask and lamp, and no doubt happy having had a few halves in the local pub, when the sirens went off. We all dived for cover and waited. First it was quiet, then came the drone of aeroplane engines, and then there was the biggest bang we had ever heard.
We heard Dad screaming. We all jumped out from under the kitchen table to find Dad stuck in the tin bath, covered in soot. “I’ve lost me hand”, he was shouting. The bomb, which had landed in our back garden, hadn’t blown his hand off, only the bulb from his Wardens Lamp.
We had many air raid warnings, when we hid under the stairs. I saw a daylight attack on Leconfield. On many nights we saw the glow of Hull burning. The most worrying night was when a farm caught fire. It lit up the village and could be seen for miles. Luckily the Germans stayed at home that night.
We had many evacuees from Hull billeted in the village. They fitted in well and still come back to visit us. Our village school had to have an extra teacher to look after them. Most evenings the home guard patrolled around the village. Later on German and Italian prisoners of war worked on the local farms. We had a YMCA in the village hall and my Aunt used to help out at it.
One winter the ice on the village pond was so thick that some soldiers drove a small tank onto it. The ice did not crack. Randolph Churchill was, for a while, stationed at the Hall and one day his car crashed into one of the park gates.
For VE Day we had a party for the children in the village hall.