Forever Take My Hand

Therese Smith Reid Iris

Description

Iris Therese Smith Reid was born in Grimsby in 1938, and she gives a vivid account of what it was like to be a child growing up during the war. It was a time of great hardship and sometimes terror as Grimsby was ravaged by German bombing raids during the Blitz, but Iris recalls many lighter moments too, the games she played among the bombsites and the memorable characters she knew. The second part of this biography covers Iris's working family life, most of which was spent in and around Grimsby. Now in her late seventies, Iris has spent the last sixteen years looking after her husband, Francis, who has vascular dementia. Part three relates how she and Francis have struggled with his illness together and how they continue to get the most out of life.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 24 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780722347973
• Langue: English

Extrait

Forever Take My Hand
Iris Therese Smith Reid
ARTHUR H. STOCKWELL LTD
Torrs Park, Ilfracombe, Devon, EX34 8BA
Established 1898
www.ahstockwell.co.uk




2018 digital version converted and published by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Iris Therese Smith Reid, 2018
First published in Great Britain, 2018
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
By the same author:
Dementia Poems
Poems of Devotion and Commotion



Part One - War Babies: Through the Eyes of a Child
Prologue
My best friend and I are playing, skipping on the front with our street friends - they are our learners and teachers, our saviours. They are older than us and they know best, so we look up to them. They teach us their games and street songs. We are safe with them; they know everything.
Suddenly - silence. The skipping and singing stop. We are like statues. Our hearts have stopped beating. We are listening. The sirens are sounding the ‘all alert’.
We are getting ready to run for our lives - to bolt for the safety of our shelters. We hear the droning of aeroplane engines. They are back again, getting nearer. We are white and full of fear. They are coming over to drop their bombs on us, coming to kill or gas us. The bogeymen.
We take what we think might be the last look at our friends - is this goodbye? Will we be seeing them ever again?
Then a voice breaks the silence. A street boy, a trusted friend. “It’s ours! It’s OK, it’s a friendly.” He knows the sound of every engine, be it friend or foe.
We hesitate, give a sigh of relief. The sirens give the all-clear. We can breathe again. We’re safe - alive. We all carry on with our skipping game for the umpteenth time, until the next time: ‘Pittatty-pattatty on your shoulders, pittatty-pattatty on your shoulders, you will be my master.’
A new war has started, we hear from the news,
Hitler’s gone crazy. He is gassing all Jews,
Shooting the Gypsies, cleansing their race
For he only wants fair hair for his new human race.
He has taken most of Europe, but he wants all the world,
So his next stop is Britain, which he says he can win.
But he doesn’t know Britain, they will never give in,
They will fight for their country, they will fight for their king,
They will fight for their children, they will fight for their kin.
Britain and her Allies are seeking to plot –
He cannot have the rest of the world, we must make him stop.
Hit so it hurts him, let him feel the pain,
Destroy all his homeland, destroy all within.
Use all of our bombs, let’s give him the lot.
So next stop Berlin, give everything we’ve got.
So they bombed and they bombed till Berlin was a crater,
But carried on bombing until finding out later
Hitler was dead.
He committed suicide - he shot himself in the head.
Memories
They say that babies never remember, but I do. I was eighteen months old when my mother put me in a canvas box and the lid was closed on me. It was a baby’s gas mask.
I remember good times, I remember bad times, I remember we got bombed out of some places where we lived. Some would be blown to bits, others would have windows and doors blown off so we would have to move to other places. We even lived in the back of shops. Some houses were fixed up. One house we had just moved out of was fixed back up and another family moved into it. They were all killed. They had been hiding under the same table that we had previously hidden under when we left there because of the bombings. We were bombed out of three houses. Some of the places we lived in were the back of Grimsby Road, Hope Street, Bath Street and Sidney Street, Cleethorpes; and Eleanor Street, Victoria Street and King Edward Street, Grimsby.
I ran around the streets of Grimsby, disobeying my mother, knowing I could get away with it because she had that many children to look after; so I am not perfect. The world is not perfect - that’s the way life is.
My family surname was Usher. We were a big family, seven of us, three boys and four girls.
1930: Robert, blond, blue eyes.
1932: Ronald Fredrick Rix, jet-black hair, black eyes - everyone says he is the coalman’s.
1935: Shirley Estel Theodora, red hair, blue eyes - everyone says she has been left out in the rain.
1937: John Edward Harvy, blue eyes, blond hair.
1938: Iris Therese (me), golden-blond hair, green eyes.
1939: Avril Dawn, red hair, blue eyes - another one left out in the rain.
1944: Sandra, red hair, blue eyes - a war baby.
So when the war started in 1939, my mother had six small children aged from nine years old to four months old, and another child was born in the war.
PRAYER BEFORE BEDTIME
Before I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Mother and Father and all us children are sat around the fire listening to the radio telling us we are at war. I’m one year old and Mother’s holding my baby sister, who is five months old. Their faces are full of fear. We know something terrible is happening by Mother’s actions. She is pacing up and down and crying. Us little ones start crying with her.
They gather all the family together, sit us all down and tell us all to listen to what they have to say. They tell us we all have to be prepared because we are at war with Germany and they will be sending planes over us to drop bombs on us and gas us, but our army and navy and air force will be protecting us; they will be fighting back to stop them killing us.
We would all have gas masks, to save us from being gassed.
My older brothers keep saying, “If they come anywhere near us we will kill them.”
During the next few months Mother and Father, with all us children trying to help, dig a big hole in the bottom of our garden for the Anderson shelter to keep us safe when the bombs start dropping on us. I am digging the hole with them, but the lads keep telling me to keep out of the way. They mix loads of concrete, making a big den, then put an aluminium roof over the top of it, shovelling dirt and grass over the top and leaving a hole for a door. They put two iron beds in there with straw mattresses, a Tilley lamp and plenty of boxes filled with stuff. We are not allowed to play in it until the sirens sound and then we have to run straight for it, no matter where we are or what we are doing. The older ones have to make sure the younger ones are inside first because the sirens going off mean the German planes, our enemies, are coming to bomb or gas us, but we will be safe in the shelter.
If we do not have time to reach our shelter, then we have to go in the cupboard under the stairs, or under the big wooden table.
By this time we each had a gas mask and were told to keep it with us when the sirens started. My gas mask and my baby sister’s were different from the others. It was a long canvas box with a lid that you could look out of on the top. Mother tried me in it one day. She laid me in and shut the lid on me. I saw her looking at me through it. I was terrified and started crying and screaming and trying to kick the lid open.
She took me out of it and said, “Don’t be scared of it. It is to save you from being gassed - it might save your life one day. But you are too big for it, so I will get you one like the others have.”
Then she showed the others how to put their gas masks on. They had to put them on their face covering their nose and mouth and they had a box to put them in with a strap to go over their shoulders.
They had built large shelters down most streets for people who did not have a shelter. Most people did not have gardens, so couldn’t build their own if they wanted to. Everybody had to black out their windows in their houses every night at blackout time. They were not allowed to show any lights at all, so when the enemy planes came over to bomb or gas us everything was in blackness; they had no targets.
The streets were patrolled by blackout wardens to make sure no lights were showing. By now most of the young men had gone off to war. So had our father - he was a field gunner. Mother said we were not to worry as everyone believed the war would not last long and they would soon be back home. But weeks later my two older brothers also left home to be evacuated with loads of boys and girls from down our street and throughout Grimsby. They had gone to farms out in the countryside, because we lived right near the docks and the River Humber was full of fishing boats and merchant ships. Goods from the North Sea were shipped into Grimsby and Hull to dispatch all around by the railways. So we lived in a very dangerous place. Grimsby was among the first places the enemy bombed, and as we were also surrounded by many airfields close by we were in constant danger of being bombed. That is why my brothers had to stay evacuated until the war ended.
All of us smaller children stayed with Mother. We were glad because we had made lots of friends with other children down our street - Hope Street. Mother only allowed me to play out for one hour each day and I wasn’t allowed to go off the front. But my best friend and I often went out of the street when we got fed up with doing handstands up against the wall. Mother did not know this because she was too busy with my youngest sister. When she did find out I disobeyed her she was quite mad at me and bounced me up and down by my hair, which she did whenever I disobeyed her. But it was worth it because my