Malcolm Wheatman recalls wartime days in Kendal

AT SCHOOL during the war, an only child and living in Kendal, I felt separated from the war but never doubted that we would come through, partly due to government morale-boosting publicity.

Before and during the war I remember the freedom of being able to roam the fields, lanes and hedgerows between Helme Drive and The Helm.

Sounds of the war included the air-raid siren during the night heralding distant explosions at the Barrow shipyards.

The evacuee and I slept under the dining-room table until the all-clear.

Another time the war reached out to me was while preparing to go on a Benson Knot picnic. I was in the street, not having heard the siren and was angrily ordered to get indoors immediately by a furiously cycling Air Raid Warden: "Don’t you know there’s an air-raid on?"

It turned out to be a Spitfire pursuing a German aircraft. A few minutes beforehand I had briefly heard them flying just over roof height.

Other aspects of the war included collecting money for the local Spitfire Fund and scrap for salvage (the word recycling was many years in the future).

The possibility of my having to ‘join up’ was approaching. Some of my near contemporaries had joined the 1127 Squadron of the ATC (Air Training Corps) RAF Youth.

My Uncle Frank had joined the Border Regiment and was lucky to survive Dunkirk, then with the 8th army at El Alamein, fought through Libya and so on to Italy, Monte Cassino and the Italian capitulation.

It was not until I started working with two men just ‘demobbed’ who had lost a brother each, did I feel closer to the stark reality of war.