Ancestor Gateway Forum - Childhood Memories, School Memories and Contacts New Topic  |  Search Thread Topic: Wartime Memories Topic Originator: Pat Cook nee STEAD Post Date August 13, 2005 @ 5:01 PM  Wartime Memories Pat Cook nee STEAD August 13, 2005 @ 5:01 PM Reply  |  Email  |  Print  |  Top I lived in Cosgrove Street, Cleethorpes, Lincs, off the Market Place. I remember being got out of bed on night to see "Doodle Bugs" or V2 Rockets passing over Cleethorpes.  Our row of houses had straife marks caused by a passing aircraft dive bombing our street and peppering the houses with shot. In April 1943 my brother John was born. My mother was comfortably in bed with the birth iminent when the siren went. The midwife got my mother downstairs and into our Morrison Shelter. The shelter was in our front room, and took up just about all the space, it was a flat metal box, about 2ft 6 inches high, about 4 ft x 5 ft, with steel mesh sides. My mother must have been most uncomfortable squashed into this box, but fortunately the all clear sounded and she was able to get back upstairs, it was to be a traumatic experience all round for her. Apparently the leg of the bed went thru the floor boards which were eaten away with woodworm, my father had to go outside and take down the clothes line and lash the bed together. I was only 8, so not aware of this drama at the time. I can remember being taken by the school onto the Pier Gardens, we all had to have 6d to get a 'National Savings Stamp' it must have been a Savings Campaign, there was a large model of a 'Squander Bug' think it must have been paper mache', with spidery legs sticking out of it. Cleethorpes Promenade had barbed wire along it to stop you going on the beach. Pat in Grimsby, Lincs Ed:  Life went on in spite of the War then - and babies got born in all sorts of circumstances.  I suppose many beaches were sectioned off. Let us know your story if you lived in a seaside town during the war.