[jamesicus]

After Dunkirk -- the early summer of 1940

Although we were removed from the initial war action here in Lancashire, everybody pretty well understood the gravity of the situation after Dunkirk and realized that we were now fighting for our very survival as a Nation. I believe the BBC and the Newspapers (we took the Daily Mail during the week and the News of the World & Sunday Pictorial on Sunday) reported the war situation honestly and responsibly. I don't recall any real panic or a pervading sense of doom and gloom. We often talked about the war at school -- teachers and students -- and there seemed to be a general consensus that we would weather the storm and win the war eventually -- I know that I always held that view. At the local level people seemed to accept that we would probably soon experience Air Raids and that grim times (rationing and shortages) lay ahead. Our parents reassured us that we would be safe.

Our local Air Raid Warden announced that the neighborhood post was offering instruction on how to use stirrup pumps in combination with sandbags to extinguish incendiary bombs in case we found one burning in our house after an air raid. My mother and me went for the instruction together. One of the Air Raid Wardens explained that you couldn't extinguish an incendiary bomb with just water -- the burning magnesium would explode -- you had to smother it first with a sandbag. The drill was for one person to man the stirrup pump (submersed in a bucket of water) while the other person crept forward in a crouched posture and, using a dustbin lid for a shield, toss a small sandbag on the burning magnesium thereby smothering it -- the pump operator would then direct a a spray of water on the sandbag to extinguish the incendiary bomb. Our drill was a fiasco -- my mother wasn't strong or dexterous enough to toss the sandbag on the (simulated) bomb and when we reversed roles she also wasn't strong enough to produce more than a dribble of water from the nozzle. Mercifully, we never had to use a stirrup pump/sandbag at any time during the war.

James