Transcript for: living in the countryside during the war
Interviewee: Mildred Coombs
Subject: Almondbury High School
We lived in Sunderland before the war started and when the war was about to start my dad said ‘we’re moving away from Sunderland’ because it was a dock area. We were glad we did, a fortnight after the war just where we did was absolutely flattened. A landmine was dropped and I think 300 people were killed, everything was wiped out, so we were very very fortunate. If we had stayed there I wouldn’t be here now but something seemed to tell my dad ‘we must move away from here’ and we were lucky to know a famer who had this little cottage. It was very primitive, no hot water, no electricity, outside toilet and to get to the toilet, I’m not joking, my sister and I used to go round together because you had to go through the hen house to get to it. We used to go so one could stand outside jumping up and down to keep the mice and rats away. So I have never liked country living and I’d never go back, I know it isn’t like that now but on dark nights, you couldn’t have a torch or anything because of the blackout we used to go creeping round holding on to each other.And of course there was the blackout and if you had the tiniest chink of light somebody would come knocking on your door ‘draw the curtains, what do you think you’re doing,’ everything had to be kept dark. It was not nice