D-Day, Fags and Chewing Gum

As told to Alan Brigham, Hullwebs.co.uk, 13/07/2005

Our school was bombed, St Mary’s Witham. After that we did nothing until the school reopened. We didn’t go to any other school. My father went in the forces in ’39 so when he came back we didn’t know him. He went to somewhere in Scotland when I was 4 years old, and then it was off to Egypt, servicing the aircraft. He said it was fairly easy, the RAF had better conditions, he was injured over there though.

Hull got hit every night, day and night, for a two year period. They way the houses were cramped together it’s a wonder that they didn’t kill thousands more than they did. They did a good thing in some ways, the Nazis, demolishing the slums in the old town.

The older lads, every house had a gas meter and after the raids they used to go and nick all the money!

I remember the rationing; bread and potato rationing went on into the fifties. You didn’t worry about clothes ‘cos there wasn’t any.

Were we lived they cleared all these houses for training the French and Americans — British as well, for D-Day, down Wincomlee, they called it Salvation Army, Wincomlee and Barmston Street. It was like a big area that they barb-wired it off, with all the soldiers inside the wire and the solders were shooting live ammunition. All the kids used to go watch — and they were using thunder flashes. You used to go there and say, “Have you got some gum, chum?” to the Americans. They used to ask if we had an older sister and we always said “Oh yeah.” That way we used to get fags as well, and some stockings; “My sister will be coming at 4 o’clock tonight.” There were loads of pubs in the area, it was about the only thing round there the Germans hadn’t bombed. My cousin went out with a few. Her old man couldn’t sleep upstairs and she couldn’t sleep downstairs, like. One of the Yanks gave me a sweater — the arms were miles too long but that didn’t matter.

My eldest uncle was a sergeant in the rifles in ’40/42 and who used to leave a rifle at home and tell us to use it if they ever came. There was a lot of that went on. After the war there was a big amnesty and tons of weapons got handed in. They knew it was going on in the war and that’s how Churchill liked it. If they ever came there was no question about it, it was everyone’s duty to shoot them. There was a load of weapons buried around this area (Queens Gardens) just in case. I suppose it was the same all over Hull.

At Reckitt & Coleman’s on Stoneferry, well there was tons of food buried there. I remember people still digging it up well after the war and bring it home. You didn’t know what it was, you just opened a tin, you went to some kids houses and you didn’t know what you were getting for tea ‘cos none of it had any labels on like. In the army when I did my National Service, we had frozen food from the ‘40s. It was so full of water when you opened it you had to put it through a wringing machine before you could use it.

All the stuff we used to have, all the helmets; French, German, British, we had bayonets, bullets, trench tools; the whole lot. All the kids had them, and buckets full of shrapnel. I don’t know what happened to it all, it just all seemed to disappear in the seventies. Nobody wanted anything to do with the war — You just didn’t talk about it. It’d all be worth a fortune these days though.

When we were in Egypt we used to have to go around blowing up all the left-over ammunition and making all the lorries unusable so the Arabs couldn’t use them. The Arabs got loads of stuff though and used it all against us at Suez.

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