"A Sure Sign!": Memories of Hartlepool

These are the Second World War recollections of my mother, who is in her ninety-fourth year.

On a dark evening in February 1939, Jane Horsley’s war came fearfully close.
Hurrying to shops which remained open until 8 p.m., the young wife noticed that above the darkened streets, the skies were lit by a very red glow. At first she dismissed it as a reflection from the steelworks slap heap.

It was her cousin Liza whom she met, who sowed the cold finger of fear in her heart. “When I looked up it was to see the sky covered by a curtain of light and the whole was shimmering with a multitude of bright lights. My cousin said fearfully that it was a sure sign of war. “I was terrified. I thought that at any moment something drastic was about to happen. It was not until the nine o’clock news came on the wireless that the phenomenon was explained. It was the Northern Lights, not usually seen so far south.”

Later, said Jane, she was to wonder at her cousin’s prophecy, when in the September the Prime Minister announced that the nation was at war with Germany. She was preparing lunch, when her mother, who lived next door, came running in saying “Dear God, not again” said Jane, who now lives at Lynton Court. Throston Grange, Hartlepool.

“Like many others my mother had suffered the First World War and my father had served in it. His brother was killed in the dreadful battle of the Somme.”

In May of 1939, recalled Jane, a new submarine, the ‘Thetis’, sank during the sea trials in Liverpool Bay. More than ninety men and boys were lost — most of them shipyard workers. In the shipyard town of Hartlepool, the threat of war took a back seat as people listened to the wireless to learn if the men could be rescued from the partially submerged submarine. “But the rescue efforts failed and the ‘Thetis’ slipped beneath the waves, drowning all, except one man, I believe. Sabotage was suspected.”

Later that year people were issued with Anderson air raid shelters and gas masks, and after making sure the shelter in the garden was secure, Jane’s husband joined the R.A.F. “At the time I had three young children — two at school and one only a baby.
We hear today of so much sympathy being meted out to single parent families, but there were millions of single parents during war years, and we coped with very little help. We had rationing, the blackout, part-time schooling and air raids to contend with through no fault of our own.”

Jane joined the A.R.P. street fire patrol, and was issued with an armband and a steel helmet. “When the siren sounded I put my children into the shelter, and then went out during the air raid to my post to watch for incendiary bombs.” Her war continued and as she said, every time she listened to the wireless “It was to hear war propaganda being poured out, mostly by the traitor Lord Haw-Haw. According to him most of Britain’s cities had been reduced to rubble, and the Ark Royal had been sunk.

My mother had made an extensive collection of family artefacts and memorabilia, which I used when teaching History and Humanities during along teaching career

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