Bedford in Wartime

Bedford in Wartime

Wartime Bedford

Audio transcripts for lesson 2

Air Raid Shelters

Mr Arthur Keech

The only shelter we had at the time was a table, which was the ordinary living room table which we used to dive under or under the stairs. Well we were never in there much.

Mr John Hughes

I think the only time I was really frightened was when you did hear a siren from wherever and you knew there were bombers about somewhere and we used to get under the stairs. My mum used to put us under the stairs until it was ‘all clear’ but you would hear the bomber, you know the sound of it, and thinking ‘is it coming nearer?

Mr Derek Mabey

Initially we had no air raid shelter. When the warning sirens went at night my brother, sister and I had to stretch out to sleep under the large table in the kitchen. However, an Anderson shelter made of galvanised iron soon became available. Our Anderson shelter was half buried in our front garden with the rectangular access at one end facing the south. It was given a concrete floor with a drain in the south west corner. The shelter was covered with earth excavated for camouflage, warmth and extra protection. My mother planted this cover with flowers in the spring. In front of the access space my father built two blast walls at right angles made from old tea boxes filled with rubble. These were roofed by an old wooden door primarily to keep out the rain. Across the access space he fitted a steel door made from an old sign from the Café.

Mrs Mary Smith

At home it used to be mainly at night I think. If it seemed bad we used to come downstairs and we had a coal hole where we had the coal but Dad had made it into a kind of shelter, so we could go and sit down there with a paraffin stove and a light, shut the doors up and stay there until the ‘All Clear’.

Gas Precautions

Mrs Barbara Lynn

The other thing was gas masks, we had to carry them everywhere. Well they were in those horrible brown cardboard boxes so somebody with great initiative started making pretty cases for them, make it an accessory. We’d got leather cases and my Mother went to Bedford one day and took her gas mask. Dad said to her before she went, “Don’t forget your gas mask” so off she went with her gas mask. In the meantime Dad had gone to the coke cupboard or something or other so when she came back he said, “Did you take your gas mask?” She said, “Yes.” He said, “No, you didn’t.” She said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Go and have a look in the cupboard.” And she’d taken a box of beads with her. She had used the gas mask box to put a load of beads in and she’d been to Bedford with a box of beads.

Mrs Barbara Lynn

Then people got slack about using gas masks and so they thought they’d catch people out. I was in Luton going to catch the bus to come home and I hadn’t taken my gas mask with me, had I, because we got blasé about this sort of thing. All of a sudden this van came up by the side of me and that’s what they were looking for. They gave a quick blast of tear gas, oh, god I took my gas masks with me after that. When I got on the bus my eyes were streaming, I was coughing, they’d seen me without a gas mask - a quick warning. I didn’t go without it anymore.

Mr Gerald How

Of course we all carried our gas masks in the little cardboard boxes and the string. We had to take those to school with us and hang them on the hooks where we hung our clothes and then every so often we had gas mask drill.

Mrs Myra Webb [no audio]

We had little mickey mouse masks, we schoolchildren had. I hated the smell. The smell of the gas mask yes, it was horrible. When you were a child and you had to put your face in there. I still remember them having making me put it on and the smell of it.

Mr Peter Cook

I can remember, for example, walking along the pavement and there was a post sticking up and on the top there was a kind of sloping tray effect painted a certain kind of green. And we were told that this was to detect poison gas and that we had to watch these things very carefully, especially if there had been an air raid. Because if there was poison gas in the atmosphere these trays would change colour and this was very much part of my daily life.

Mrs Rebecca Cook

We were all issued with gas masks. We had to go into the Village Hall to be fitted - to be shown how to put them on. And I remember I had a baby sister and that one that you had to put the baby right inside the thing, a great big thing on the table and mother looking at that and saying, “Never will I put my baby in there!” She was just horrified.

Mrs Rebecca Cook

I remember one of my big sisters making cases. We used up any old things that we could cut up, old curtains or fabric, or whatever. She made us very smart cases with a strap because we had to take them to school every day and that just became part of our uniform, with our satchels and we always got an order mark if we forgot them. We used to put them on top of the cupboard when we got to school and then every Friday morning have Gas Mask Drill. Had to go through and all put our gas masks on and pull funny faces at each another and the teacher would come round testing to see that - putting their fingers in the sides to see – whether they would have been any use I really don’t know.

Blackout

Mr Arthur Keech

Well I used to make them. They were lino. Used to make a wooden frame and tack the stuff to it and then put them up with screws with buttons to fix it to, that’s how I used to do it. A lot of people used to do in the inside. I made all ours at home, made the next door neighbours and so forth. We were always doing things like that. The headlights on the cars had those funny little things on, like a tin with slots in.

Mrs Rebecca Cook

We were told we must now must blackout every window and I know we’d been preparing for it. My sisters had made black curtains and dark curtains and we had a big board we put up over the kitchen window and we were very careful about that. And an Air Raid Warden doing his business at very, what’s the word I want, coming round and checking up just to see that there were no chinks of light showing anywhere.

Mr John Hughes

I can remember my father being prosecuted! One Saturday evening, I’d been to Bedford on the bus with my mother and we came home late and we were having tea and obviously the curtains hadn’t been drawn properly and this local policeman came to the door and we were showing a light through the curtains. And you’d be prosecuted for it and that’s why they weren’t very popular, that sort of thing.

Mr John Hughes

The main thing we were aware of I think was the local police because they had lots of different police because there was a blackout. You had to have all your curtains drawn at night and you weren’t supposed to ride bikes with lights on unless they were shielded.