Dorothy C. Maguire, nee Coles, recalls life during the Second World War

THE chief thing I remember is that during the war years we had to take our gas masks, in card-board boxes carried with a loop of string, to school every day. While there we frequently had practices on their correct use.

My father, Albert Coles, a veteran of the First World War, was the head air-raid warden of Arnside, probably because we were one of the few people with a telephone!

Therefore when enemy air-craft were approaching, on their way to bomb Barrow, my father was able to notify the authority and the air-raid siren could be sounded.

In our house, on Church Hill, my father, a master builder, had worked out that the safest place in the house was the downstairs toilet, so when the alarm was raised we were all shepherded into this small space. We spent many hours closeted in there!

We were lucky that no bombs ever landed on Arnside, but a land-mine landed adjacent to Leighton Beck Farm, near Yealand.

A group of us, including Freda, David and George, walked the one and a half miles to the farm and collected shrapnel as souvenirs.

About the same time another land-mine landed on the first fairway of Silverdale Golf Course – my father and the other players were none too pleased at the extra bunker!

Probably the German planes were being chased by our fighter planes and just needed to lighten their load. They did less damage here in the countryside than in Barrow.

An amusing incident was told by my father about two old ladies who lived higher up the road. They thought an incendiary bomb had landed in their garden, but all the wardens could find was a hedgehog!

Many families in Arnside took in evacuees, and our school numbers were dramatically increased, and lasting friendships were made.