Mary Butler
When I was a child in the war in Stirtloe, we had evacuees that came to stay with us as we lived out in the country. We had one who was 15, he didn't stop long. The next one was a large boy called Tubby, whose mother came to visit while he was with us. Later on we had two brothers who went to the Tollington Boys School in the Towers. They were nice and stayed about three months. We had a spare bedroom, so we had to take them in.
We were all issued with gas masks in a box that had a carrier to hold them and we had them on our backs so if we were bombed there might have been gas around. A man came and fitted an extra filter on the bottom of it which made it bigger. Everyone had to have one and we had to take it everywhere we went.
It was a very scary time as at night we listened for planes coming over. We were near two airfields, so it was noisy at night. We didn't have an air raid shelter, so we were told to get under the kitchen table which was very solid. Most food was rationed, we had ration books we took to the shop where we were allowed a little of everything and only a few sweets a week. We didn't keep very fit as we weren't getting good food. My dad grew vegetables in the garden, he had chickens for the eggs when they laid them, and also rabbits as well. I didn't know when we had a rabbit to eat, where it had come from. I was told it was a wild one. I had a long way to walk to school, we came home for dinner at 12:00pm and went back at 1:45pm and finished at 4:00pm.