��ѿ��ý

Edited and typed by Louise Collier

I was born on the 8th July 1936, so I’d grown up through the World War 2 years, and these are some of my memories of them:-

“The air-raid shelters” quite big enough to accommodate a lot of people, but cold and uncomfortable with slatted wooden benches or shelves, big enough to lie on. I never saw anyone do this perhaps due to the lack of pillows or warm blankets etc., My Father was a Seaman and Mum had seven children.

We where blitzed from two houses in Hull, ‘Carlton Street’ and ‘Hawthorne Avenue’. I remember the windows and door being blown out in Hawthorn Avenue and walking over the front door, swinging like a see-saw over the step. Although I didn’t know it at the time, my happiest time would be as an evacuee.

My foster parent’s were the local Blacksmith and his wife in Rawcliffe, near Goole. They were a good and kind couple and I’ve appreciated all they had done for me. I believe they were childless at the time, so having a pre-school child thrust upon you can’t have been easy. It must have been traumatic for me, being separated from my Mother and siblings, because my first night I remember, soiling my bed and feeling very scared but I shouldn’t have worried because there was no harsh words or rebuke from either of them.

That lovely summer I stayed with them was spent swinging in the orchard, looking skyward watching and listening to the rooks in the tree-tops, after being woken up in the early morning by their noisy calls. I was fascinated when allowed to sit on the step in the forge and watch the horses being shod by the Blacksmith. The heat and smoke, also the smell of the burning hair, was magical. Years later, I could create the same smell and bring back the memories, by singeing loose hairs from our comb on the arga hotplate in our kitchen.

Four other members of our family, including my brother were also evacuees in Rawcliffe. We didn’t see each other during this period, for reasons unknown to ourselves. Of course, the saddest part of the war for our family was the death of our dear Father, George William Glenton, who was lost on H M trawler the ‘St Cathan’ on loan to the U S Navy aged 32 years, on the 11th November 1942. His brother, Thomas Arthur Glenton had been killed two years earlier, when the H M trawler St Goran was sunk, aged 41 years. Another tragedy for my poor Grandparent who lost three sons in two wars. My dear Mother became a war-widow and her children became war-orphans.

A light went out of our lives’ for a long-time. Dad had no grave like many others’, but Mum had a memorial vase at the Fisherman’s Bethal, on Hessle Road for flowers. My eldest sister Ilene is now the keeper of Dad’s vase.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.