'Barrage balloons in the daytime, searchlights at night': One man's vivid memories of war over South Tyneside
Eric Moyse will never forget his childhood days in South Tyneside. They were filled with memories of air raids, barrage balloons and going to school with gas masks.
The former South Shields man celebrated his 90th birthday this week with family in his now home in Reading.
Watching as the air raid shelters were delivered
But Eric still has remarkable memories of being a three year old when World War II broke out.
He lived on the Cleadon Estate and recalled: “One of my first memories is the summer of 1939, looking out of the bedroom window and seeing the delivery of sheets of corrugated iron.
“These would soon be assembled and half-sunk into our garden as an Anderson shelter. We had air-raid warnings, first as a practice, and then, when the war started, for real.”
‘We could hear the chug-chug of German planes’ engines’
South Shields was hit by a whole series of bombing raids in 1941 and Eric remembered: “On one night alone 68 people were killed with 2000 rendered homeless. German bombers had evidently mistaken a local arched bridge for the famous Tyne Bridge at Newcastle, eight miles inland.
“The town’s shipyards were hit and several of the town’s major shops were demolished. The Black’s Regal cinema was also hit.”
Eric remembered ‘barrage balloons in the daytime and searchlights at night. In the shelter we could hear the chug-chug of German planes’ engines (a different sound from the British) and incendiary bombs whistling down.
‘We always carried our gas masks and we kept a tin full of emergency food supplies in our desks at school’
“I cannot remember being afraid: I was probably too young. If it was a day-time raid, we sang “ten green bottles” in the air- raid shelters at Cleadon Park School until the all-clear. We always carried our gas masks and we kept a tin full of emergency food supplies in our desks at school.”
Another vivid memory was rationing. Eric said: “The nearest I got to imported fruit to was seeing adverts for Fyffe’s bananas stuck on the greengrocers’ windows. I wondered what a banana would taste like. My wife, Doreen, remembers her grandmother asking to buy an orange from the mother of a young child but even sixpence was not enough to get the owner to part with it.”
Eric’s dad worked long hours as a fitter in Readhead’s shipyard while his wife’s father worked in the same yard as a joiner.
‘We obtained our information about the war from the Shields Gazette’
“At the height of the bombing my mother, brother and I were evacuated to Alston in the high Pennine hills. Food there was much less of a problem and I remember seeing a plucked chicken on the table. It was cut open to reveal two unlaid eggs. Luxury!
“The bombing of north-east England eventually halted and we returned home, where we kept rabbits to supplement our diet. Ironically, when Doodlebugs started to rain down on London, we took in evacuees from Dagenham, a young mother and her baby.
“We obtained our information about the war from the Shields Gazette, cinema newsreels but mainly news bulletins on the radio. News about the war was usually good because of the propaganda element but it became even better after the Normandy landings and then Germany’s retreat across Europe.”
VE Day was ‘a night to remember’
Eric’s family lived in a council house in Fir Grove on the Cleadon Estaten when VE Day came.
He remembered: “Two neighbours (brothers called Broughton) played their accordions and one youngster shinned up a lamp post to insert a bulb to double the amount of street lighting for the event. It was a night to remember.”
Eric also recalled coming out of the old Palladium cinema in 1945 to find a van outside the Nook pub ‘from which dairyman Pattinson was serving ice cream in paper cake cups.
‘Cornets and wafers must have been unavailable. Our first ice for six years tasted delicious.’
Our thanks go to Eric for sharing some wonderful memories. To share your own of South Tyneside’s past, email [email protected]