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Evacuation 1939-40 of children
from Leeds to Aberford part 3 of story

What was it like wearing a gas mask?
I mentioned gas masks and I said then that everyone in the country had a gas mask, so that we would all be able to breathe even if we were attacked by gas. School children were issued with their gas masks through their school, and each school-child was responsible for his/her own gas mask. Every one was marked with the owner’s name. At the time you were given a mask all the straps were carefully adjusted, so that each mask fitted its owner perfectly — no gaps or slackness that would have allowed gas to enter. Air came in at the bottom through a filter so that only good air was breathed in.

Sometimes, when I go out I forget my purse or my umbrella, but during the war you could NOT forget your Gas Mask. It was kept in a cardboard box with a cord that went over your head and across your body and you usually had a waterproof cover over the box. Your gas mask had to go with you everywhere to help to keep you safe. When you had your gas mask on it smelt a bit chemically, like a chemist’s shop and you couldn’t tell what people were saying very easily as it changed the sound of their voice, because the sound had to come back out through the filter.

Did our house get bombed?
No, but during an air-raid at home in Leeds I did see the fire that started immediately after a bomb had fallen on a pub that was close by. We had been in the Anderson air-raid shelter at the time and we heard the strange thud that there always was when a bomb dropped. In a few minutes we peeped out. The fire lit up the whole sky. Next day when we went to see we found that the whole building was demolished. There was just a big hole - a crater, where it had been. No, I wasn’t bombed in my own home, but bombs dropped very close, and that is why we had been evacuated, so that the children could be kept as safe as possible.

To return now to the question about the length of time of my evacuation — I said I was evacuated for 8-9 months, and that Margaret, my sister, was an evacuee for a longer period of time than I was: My mother took me home from Becca in the Spring of 1940. Margaret stayed with Mr and Mrs E_____ for a while longer… Then she was moved nearer to school and lived with Mr and Mrs C___ who ran the petrol station. Then she was moved again, all the way to Hook Moor. She stayed in a tiny lodge with a sweet lady called Mrs W____, another evacuee called J___ B____ who was the same age as Margaret, and Mrs W____’s pet raven (a black bird — a bit like a crow).

When Margaret was 11 years of age she sat a secondary school entrance examination called a Scholarship. She was the only girl in the school to pass. Margaret came home to Leeds then so that she could go to secondary school in the September of 1940 as there wasn’t one of those in Aberford.

In our time away from home Margaret had 5 moves and I had 3.

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