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This story was submitted to the peoples war site.By Daniel Marshall of North Lincolnshire Museum on behalf of Elsie Henry,and has been added to the site with her permission,the author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I was born in Messingham October 9th 1929 - Elsie Elizabeth Coulson. We moved to 31 Long Road Scunthorpe in 1939. I have two brothers and two sisters. I was the third child. My father was on the Steelworks, he was a foreman.

My mother was always ill so my sisters had to bring me up. My brother Bill used to put me in a basket on his bicycle and take me out. My aunt used to come to our house on a Monday morning to do the washing. She started at six in the morning and finished at four in the afternoon. She had 15 children and she used to bring the little ones with her.

My sister Mavis used to take me to school because my mother was always ill.At seven years old I was very ill and my mother sent for the doctor. We had to pay for the doctor then, my mother used to pay sixpence a week on Friday night.The doctor said I had diphtheria and I had to go into hospital. They put me in a steam tent,I was in hospital for six months.

It was the beginning of the war and they were putting up sandbags around the hospital. My mother used to come and see me every day when she was not ill in bed. They had to stove the bedroom out that I was in. Nobody could go in the room for one month. None of my brothers or sisters got diptheria only me. My mother said I got diptheria because I was always swapping comics and they were dirty.I was off school for a year.

I lived in Long Road. It was a pleasant road in a friendly area. There was Hills the hairdresser, next door was a fish and chip shop, then a sweet shop, and also a butchers and a Pharmacy. There was a big roundabout on one corner, a Post Office and the Co-op. My mother used to send my brother or me for a penny worth of dripping from the butchers.

At night we used to play rounders in the street. At the beggining of the war each family was allocated one Anderson Shelter. Everyone had to have a gas mask[even babies].We had to take the gas masks everywhere,even to school.

There was a big roundabout on the green where ther was a temporary reservoir and an Air Raid Patrol Station[ARP].My father had to the Station when he left work and when there was an air raid. He had a black box and it bleeped when there was an air raid. He used to get tins of Oxos and we used to take them to school instead of sweets.

During the war years we still had to go to school but if there was an air raid we had to go home. When the air raids got bad they closed the schools until they had some Anderson shelters built at school. We had to go to different houses then, one week we went in mornings and one week we went in the afternoons. My mother used to put us to bed in the Anderson shelter and sometimes we had to be in and out of the shelter all day.

Everyone had to have a ration book, one for food and one for clothes. My Aunt lived in Colne and she worked in the cotton mills. She used to send us material through the post.

My mother was taken to hospital and she died .It was one of the worst days of my life. I was 11 years old. My father went to pieces ,my aunts used to come to look after us until the funeral.

We went back to school after my mother died and father used to put a list up giving us different jobs to do. My brother had to do washing up,my sisters had to do the bedrooms and the cooking. We used to queue for everything,food ,fruit,coal and wood.I used to push a barrow from Long Road to the Steelworks for a bag of coal.

My father used to do his football pools on a Friday night and we used to take turns to post it. We used to get a penny for posting for him.

My brother Bill left home to join the RAF,he was a rear gunner. By the end of the war he was a Flight Lieutenant.

Bill used to go on bombing raids over Germany. When he came home on leave some of the crew used to stay at our house. There were Canadians and Australians and a New Zealander. They used to bring my sisters and me boxes of food. My sister Joan went to be a nurse, she was in a hospital in London.

My sister Mavis decided to join the ATS so I was left to look after my brother Norman. He was only seven years old and I was still at school.My father had to get permission from the school for me to leave to look after him and my brother and the house.

I was 13 years old and I had to queue for everything. I used to do the washing and ironing. We had no fire so I had fetch the coal from the Steelworks. I liked to listen to the wireless-Glen Miller ,Joe Loss and the news of the war.

We used to see the soldiers on the green near where I lived. There were Australians and Americans,they used to give us parachute silk to make knickers and skirts. Soldiers used to go to the Baths Hall for their meals,they used to live in tents on Atkinson Warren. The officers used to stop at the hotels. We used to see barage balloons that floated above the ground at the end of long steel cables,they were used to deter low flying enemy aircraft.

My brother Bill got married,it was a night mare,we had to go round all the family for their food coupons. All the Air Crew came to the wedding, they brought some of the food. My brother only had a 24 hour pass.My sister-in-law had everyones clothing coupons,she made her own wedding dress. My sister was a bridesmaid, I couldnt be a bridesmaid because I had given my coupons up for the brides dress.
My sister-in-law came to live with us so I had to go out to work for an old lady. I got 7 shillings and 6 pence-7/6d a week. It was hard work. I used to go at 7 in the morning until 7 at night.

It was the end of the war, VE day. We all went mad everyone in the street pooled their coupons. We had a good baking session, some did cakes and buns and others made sandwiches.

We put tables up and we had a good time,we danced till it was dark.

All the soldiers started to go home.

My sisters did not come back home. Mavis got married and lived in Southampton. Joan lives in London I think. I have lost touch with them.

My sister-in-law took over the house. I had a letter to say I had to go into the forces or the steel works.I went into the steel works.

I started on the weighbridge, working days. I had to check the wagons to see if the contents were the same as on the label. Some of the wagons contained coal and coke.
There are about 10 different types of coal and coke. I had to climb into the wagons. I did not like climbing on wagons so I asked for a transfer.

I had to go into the Plate mills they were called 7ft and 10ft banks. I was on the 10ft bank. I used to paint steel plates; they were about 40ft to 50ft and about 20ft to 30ft wide. They used to go all over the world. I was on shift work 6 to 2,2 to 10 and 10 to 6.

I met my husband when I was working on the banks, he was a stocktaker. He asked me if I would like to go out with him to the Savoy. I went with him for 2 years and then we got engaged and were married a year later.

I enjoyed being in the plate mills, we were on night shifts there. We used to go to the other end of the mills and get string, then we used it to knit turbans and jumpers for work.

I got married in 1949 my husbands uncle gave us £20 for a wedding present. We went to Whitby for a week and then we went to live at my mothers house.We paid 7/6d a week rent to live there.

Three weeks before I got married my sister-in-law had not started on my bridesmaids dresses. She was expecting her third child and it was due any time. I had to go around my friends for their food coupons. One of my friends lived on a farm and she let us ham and some beef.

We had the reception at the house. My sister-in-law had a little boy two weeks before the wedding. We had to get chairs and tables from the parish rooms. My sister-in-law finished the bridesmaids dresses and iced the cake, it was a sponge cake. We put the tables up and laid them for forty. It was 10 at night, the night before my wedding, and she stil had to perm my hair.

We got married at 10.30 am and we had to catch a train to Whitby at 1 o'clock. We got to the station at 10 to 1. I was so excited, I had never been on a train before. We didn't have time to have a lot to eat,we didn't even cut the cake. We had to change the trains at Doncaster. We arrived at Whitby at 4 o'clock we checked in the hotel.

We went to have a look around Whitby. The weather was very good and then we looked around the town and the antique shops. We used to love going around old churchyards. We went to theatres and shows and we had a good time before we went home on the Saturday.

It was strange to live in rooms. I had never lived away from home before. We had one living room and a bedroom. I had to go through my mother-in-law's room to get to the scullery to wash up and to do the washing. I had to get up at 6 o'clock in a morning to light the brick boiler to do my washing. My mother-in-law did not like electric irons. When I had to iron I had to heat the irons on the fire. She did not have a cooker.

She had an oven and a coal fire. We had to light the fire before I could do the cooking. I used to black lead the fireplace once a week and red rud the scullery floor every time we did the washing.

My son was born in March 1950 and my husband had to have two jobs. You could not get coal so we had to fetch it from the steelworks. I remember when King George 6 died we watched the funeral on TV.

We watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth on television. We had a big street party but we had it inside because it rained. My son went as a clown. It rained all day but we had a lovely time.

I got a letter from the Council to say I had been given a bungalow in West Common Gardens. I was pleased to have my own place. We moved in and it was lovely to be on our own.

We had a red setter dog Prince and he kept on going back to my mother in laws house but he soon got used to being at the bungalow.

I had not been in long when I became ill with rheumatic fever. My son had to stay at my sister-in-laws for 6 weeks. My husband looked after me. The nurse came in every day. We had to move out of the bungalow because the Doctor said it was damp.

We moved into Conningsby Road in 1958. My husband was ill with his eyes, he had ulcers on them and had to go into hospital to have them burned off. He was blind for 6 months so I had to go out to work. I started at the co-op Restauraunt. I started at 9 in the morning till 7 at night. My mother-in-law looked after my husband and my son. I got £4.00 a week and we had to live on that for a week. It was hard work but we did it.

My husband got better and started work on the Steelworks. I kept my job at the Co-op Restauraunt and we started to save up for our own bungalow. I now got £5-16 shillings a week. I used to put my wages in the Bank because we needed £300 for a deposit. The bungalow cost £2,500 and we paid £25 a month. We moved into Shelroy Close in 1962 and we loved it and are still there. It is a lovely Close. My son got married in 1977. I have two lovely granddaughters. My husband died of Alzheimer's disease on January 28th 1993. I looked after him until he died. I miss him a lot.

Things have changed a lot since my son was born in 1950.

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