WAR Margaret West
The sirens always sounded so near - they could have been in our back garden. Rising, falling balefully - twisting our insides. Of course, I had seen pictures of sirens; of those legendary creatures,wild haired, beckoning - leading sailors to the rocks. As our mechanical warning streamed out from Laycock's factory, I pictured those evil women magically rising up from the scrubby square of lawn under our window.
I was usually pushed and manipulated into my siren suit. This was a thick, scratchy navy thing - like a woolly boiler suit with a hood. Then we all followed our fat. white Sealyham who would bob ahead of us in the dark to the dim mound of the shelter at the bottom of the garden.
Inside the "Anderson" it smelt of a earthy clay, rotting sandbags and wet cement. When the corrugated structure was first erected, we had to bale it out with a bucket on a string. Finally, we put down duck boards, and sat high on rough canvas strapped bunks.
Soon, during the raids the interior became warm and humid. There was the smoky "Kelly" paraffin lamp - that permeated all our sandwiches with its pungent fumes. There were a few lighted candles and, of course, our combined breath. Later, in larger raids, it would become even worse, as condensation misted on the metallic arches above our heads.
On most nights, the laden bombers limped slowly, heavily above. Our anti-aircraft guns, like the heavy slamming of giant wooden doors, shook the floor, and the long snarl of the fighters cut through the questing beams of the search lights.
I hated sitting there, helpless. It was like being buried too soon. I would have liked to have been out on the moors-where the planes would have been reduced to a few distant points of light instead of these steel monsters that seemed to fill our sky with their wings.
"Think back to the good things before the war,"mother would say. But I could only remember a few little things.My mind would keep bringing up the twisted skeleton of a burnt out tram in smoking rubble - my new school with a gaping hole in the hall floor, and - worst o all - the couple who had sat on their settee, with their backs to a bay window. They had had their heads blown off. After that I was careful never to sit on a settee with my back to a bay window.
I kept trying to be cheerful - concentrate - remember spacious, white promenades with clean salty breezes. Or, clinging to the rail of the "Bridlington Belle", as it swayed into the lighted, welcoming harbour - concertinas blasting out in rhythm. Remembering exotic, white chocolate like condensed milk - useless, silly things.
So we celebrated Christmas 1940 putting cotton wool from the aspirin bottle and silver stars cut from cigarette paper on our small tree from the wood. Then we waited, without much hope to see what the New Year would bring.
End.
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