Maude - Air Raid
" About 10 miles out in the country I was living with this aunt. When there was an air raid coming they’d have an alert and then an alarm. When you heard the alert, it meant, whoever’s on duty in this little group, get up and get dressed and be ready and sit there and wait, and when the alarm goes (which was a different kind of signal) then you go out and go to the main air raid warden of your district. So when the bombers were coming towards us, so we had the alarm.
I was 17. It was my turn to be on duty. So I got up and my uncle had a steel helmet from the first world war. And he said to me “I’ll lend you my tin hat.” So I’m sitting there with this tin hat on, and then the alarm went, and that means they’re about to drop bombs on you. So my uncle lept out of bed, threw his pants on, and as he walked out of the house, he took the tin hat that he had loaned me and put it on.
So I went out and they started dropping fire bombs. I ran out, and the air raid warden was up and ready and he came out. So we’re running around and the air raid warden is saying “Maude you get that fire, Dorothy you get that one, you get this one.” We had buckets with a little pump and you would fill it full of water and you would run to the fire and put the fire out."
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