Made In Hull By Maurice Fairfield Part Six - The War Part 2 (4/6)

(1/6), (2/6), (3/6), (4/6), (5/6), (6/6). Part One - Arundel Street Days Part Two - Our Terrace Part Three - The Calm before, (The Storm) Part Four - Schooldays Part Five - The War 1

In the afternoon, which was free, my mother took us all pea-picking. This was part-time work for one and sixpence a bag. We rode our bikes to some nearby farm , or the farmer would drive a tractor pulling a farm trailer to a pick up spot at the corner of Maybury Road where the tram line ended, and carry us all to the pea-field where we would pull up the plants and strip them of the green pods to fill the sacks. These were weighed and tallied up for payment at knocking off time. I t was easy work in the open air and the kids helped spasmodically usually making a few shillings for themselves.

Late in the afternoon I heard similar engines to those of the morning and again saw, high up, the shape of a similar Heinkel. Soon the shells were exploding round it and for the first time, I saw them get a result as black smoke began to pour from one of the engines leaving a thick black trail across the cloudless sky.

We crowded together under the trailer with the terrified farmer (I cannot remember seeing a man so frightened) as the plane flew on a steady course and disappeared from sight across the Humber into Lincolnshire where, we later heard, it had crashed. Another morning the sirens blew and the balloons soared as storm clouds gathered. When the storm passed overhead all the balloons were struck by lightning and the rubber envelopes blazed like huge, dark red poppies as they twisted and curled on their way to the ground leaving the black smoke of burning rubber thick in the sky and in the nostrils, as the charred remnants fell among us.

Their replacements were up in the afternoon, this time to serve as targets for a playful German pilot who cruised around the sky shooting at them, the noise of his machine guns rebounding around the clouds like the thunder of that morning. Either he got bored with his sitting ducks or ran out of bullets but he left after a while and the All Clear sounded. Once in the middle of the night a solitary German bomber was caught in the searchlight beams - the only time I ever saw this. Very high, it seemed trapped at the apex of a cone of the straight white beams. The A.A. shells sparked briefly seemingly close to the plane but it crawled across the sky apparently unharmed until it moved out of sight leaving the night sky to the searchlights, searching again as the oddly beautiful golden lights of the parachute flares lit up our houses and streets.

These early days were soon to take on a more serious character. The raids increasing in number culminating in the prolonged attacks by hundreds of planes dropping a mixture of high-explosive bombs and incendiary bombs in their thousands, which destroyed large areas of the city centre including the Rank Flour Mill next to Drypool Bridge and Hammonds Department Store together with many others.

Continued on www.thisisull.com...... Next Page (5/6).

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