Bob Berston and wife, Sylvia, both 89, are a Sunderland couple who have childhood memories of the Second World War.
They spoke to Sunderland Echo reporter Chris Cordner about those days - and, amid the 2024 festive season, the difference between Christmas then and now.
They spoke to Sunderland Echo reporter Chris Cordner about those days - and, amid the 2024 festive season, the difference between Christmas then and now.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Bob, we're here to talk about your memories of the war in your life.
00:08So, I'm going to take you back quite a way, if that's okay.
00:13Now, you were living in Sunderland, weren't you?
00:16Yeah.
00:17And what's your earliest memories of living in Sunderland?
00:24In the goths, burly goths.
00:26Oh yeah, and that's where you grew up, was it?
00:30We moved in there when I was three years old.
00:33And I mean, I think we were in there about 20-odd years in burly goths.
00:41We enjoyed the early years, you know, in there.
00:44Because there was a lot of good neighbours there.
00:47You know, I got a wrong name.
00:50I mean, those judges, they called it Hell's Kitchen.
00:53But it was far from that at times.
00:56Right.
00:57But there was a lot of good people there.
00:59Yeah, yeah.
01:01So, Bob, how old were you when the war broke out?
01:06I was born in 35 and the war broke out in 39, so I would have been four years old.
01:15Now, I believe that when the air raids happened, your family was affected by it.
01:25Were we affected?
01:26Yeah.
01:27Oh, definitely.
01:28Afterward, I think everybody was affected by that.
01:31You know, it was a thing that didn't happen before, did it?
01:35You know?
01:35Well, exactly.
01:36And we had a bomb outside our door, outside our window, really.
01:43Right.
01:44It was called an incendiary bomb, you know.
01:47And it affected downstairs more than ours, but it blew all our windows out, you see?
01:53Okay.
01:55And can you give us a bit more detail about what happened then?
01:57Can you remember it?
01:59Can you remember it well?
02:01Oh, I can certainly remember it, yeah.
02:03Yeah?
02:06My middle sister, she was only a baby at the time, she was curled up in bed
02:11and she was covered in glass, you know.
02:15And they just left her there.
02:17She's, oh, was she sleeping at all?
02:19You know, so we just left her there.
02:24Still covered in glass?
02:26We used to, past the time, we were playing cards.
02:29Oh, right.
02:31And believe it or not, playing for money as well, you know.
02:33Were you really?
02:34Oh, I would hear.
02:36They weren't the chips what they play for today, you know.
02:39They would give me some pennies and four cents as well.
02:45Well, absolutely, yes, yeah.
02:47So you didn't go down to an air raid shelter or anything like that?
02:51Oh, yes, we did.
02:53Yeah.
02:54Yeah, but if we couldn't manage to get down there,
02:57we were told that in the centre of the flats where we lived
03:02was just as safe as the air raid shelter.
03:06Right.
03:06That's what we were told.
03:08So that's why we all just stopped in the middle,
03:11in the middle of what we call the middle passage, you know.
03:14Right.
03:15And how many people would be there?
03:19Well, it was my three sisters, my mother and father and then me.
03:24So that's about six, isn't it?
03:26Six, six of us.
03:27Right.
03:28But what I remember about Mary, my youngest daughter, not daughter,
03:36sister, how brightly coloured her mask was.
03:40It was a Mickey Mouse frame, you know.
03:44In those early years, a Mickey Mouse frame.
03:47The gas mask, do you mean?
03:49Yeah, the gas mask.
03:50Yeah, it was a Mickey Mouse frame, yes.
03:57And they're trying to make some extra covers with buying tickets,
04:01you know, like the Irish tickets.
04:04It was Irish, I forget what to call it now,
04:07but my father won it one week.
04:12£50, I think, was the highest.
04:14Very nice.
04:15And I'm not kidding you, he bought everybody,
04:18all of us, something under £50.
04:21Did he?
04:22He bought me a pair of brand new leather boots, which I always wanted.
04:28And you know what?
04:29I kept them under the kitchen table,
04:31and it was time when I used to get up during the night just to smell the leather.
04:38In your childhood, what was Christmas like in those days?
04:44Eh, Christmas was a joyful thing,
04:47was a joyful event.
04:48I think it was for everybody,
04:51but toys and that was sparse then.
04:54I think you look, you've got a bag of fruit, you know.
04:59But there was times when my father used to go down to Peterborough,
05:04because, well, I think we had relatives down there,
05:07and he always came back with toys.
05:10Eh, maybe accordion for me, you know,
05:13and dolls for the girls, you know,
05:17and cricket bats for me, a cricket bat set, you know, and that.
05:22And now that was every Christmas.
05:25But, eh, singing round the fire was mostly what happened, you know.
05:30Christmas.
05:31But I really loved Christmas then, you know.
05:36And the atmosphere was great.
05:38Yeah, I loved it.
05:40Simpler days, I suppose, you know, sort of,
05:43there wouldn't have been television back then.
05:46Oh, definitely not.
05:47The only entertainment that we had then was Ready Fusion.
05:52Right.
05:53And Ready Fusion, I think, was linked up to every house, you know,
05:57and it was just a small box,
06:00but it provided all the entertainment that you wanted, you know.
06:04Yeah.
06:05You got players, songs, you know, music and everything.
06:09So, yeah, it served its purpose anyway.
06:14Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah.
06:15And can you remember, Bob, obviously next year,
06:19oh, sorry, 2025 is the 80th anniversary of the end of the war.
06:25Yeah.
06:26Can you remember what it was like in Sunderland when war ended?
06:30Well, I remember Fawcett Street being packed to the nines
06:35on the, was it the VE Day?
06:38Because I can't remember what the days are called.
06:41Anyway, that Fawcett Street, you couldn't get moved in there.
06:45You couldn't.
06:45And were you there?
06:47Hey, I was there.
06:48It was absolutely packed.
06:50Right.
06:51And what were people doing?
06:54Just playing arms up in the air.
06:57Yeah.
06:59And singing.
07:00Shouting, you know.
07:04Did you have a bit to sing yourself?
07:06Well, I couldn't sing then, but a bit of a mumble, like.
07:13So, yeah, in later life, Bob, what did you do?
07:18You had a career, I'm presuming.
07:21Well, my first job was a five-year apprenticeship
07:25in a woodcutting factory, a furniture factory.
07:30Which I served five years there.
07:33And then I moved on to the different factories
07:38because what the thing was, I wanted to learn about everything.
07:43You know, I wanted to learn how like vials were made
07:46and copper pipes were made or anything.
07:50You know, I went, I just journeyed from job to job
07:55in different places, picking information up here and there.
07:59You know, so if anybody asked me a question, I would say,
08:02oh, I want to make that there and do this here and do that there.
08:06You know?
08:07So I had a little bit of knowledge of most things then.
08:12Right.
08:13OK.
08:14And then what line of work did you go into, you know, later on?
08:20Oh, I had a variety of jobs.
08:23But the best job I ever had was on the construction, the buildings.
08:29I spent a few years on that, you know, and I had the best time ever.
08:35Because I had very good mates on the construction.
08:41There's all the different sites because I worked more or less around the northeast.
08:46You know, I think the furthest we went there was Spennymoor, where I worked there, Spennymoor.
08:51That was the furthest I ever went.
08:54Right.
08:55Well, I worked on all the town and farm when that was Greenfields and Redhouse.
09:00When this Greenfields here, I mean, I live in Redhouse now,
09:04but I can remember all the Greenfields here, you know,
09:08before the houses were built, because I worked on them.
09:11You know, I worked there with the plasters, you know?
09:14Yeah.
09:15Plastering the houses.
09:16Yeah, and I enjoyed that.
09:19Sunderland's seen a lot of change, hasn't it, in all those years?
09:21Oh, definitely, definitely.
09:24Yeah, yeah, yeah.
09:26So, family-wise, Bob, do you have a big family?
09:31I've got two girls.
09:33And so, Christmas, is that a happy time where everybody gets together?
09:37Oh, it always has been, yeah.
09:40It never is a sad day at Christmas here, is it you?
09:43Yeah.
09:44You've got four grandchildren.
09:45Yeah, I've got, she's, she's telling me, I've got to tell you that she's got two daughters,
09:51four grandchildren, me, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, right?
09:58Sure.
09:59We've got a happy family, anyway.
10:01So, Christmas these days will be very different from when you were little?
10:06Oh, definitely.
10:07Yeah, definitely.
10:08I mean, today, you can buy anything you want today, you know?
10:15You've got so much choice in the shops, in the stores,
10:20where when we were little, you didn't have that choice, you know?
10:23Yeah.
10:24You got what you got, and you had to take what you got, you know?
10:29And my favourite nuts then were hazelnuts.
10:34I couldn't get enough of them.
10:36And that was a treat, was it, back then?
10:39Eh?
10:39That was a treat, was it, for Christmas?
10:41Oh, definitely a treat, yeah.
10:44And there wasn't any, I don't know, there wasn't any bananas around then, at that time.
10:49Yeah.
10:50Because they'd be rationing, still.
10:53They had all the ration books and all, yeah.
10:56There was quite a few things rationed.
10:59Sweets, as well, you know?
11:01But hey, we lived through it.
11:03We got through it.
11:04Absolutely, yes.
11:05It just shows you can survive on small enough.
11:09You can't when you need to, you know?
11:11Yeah.
11:12We're just getting some memories of the war years.
11:16Yeah.
11:17What do you remember about the war years?
11:20Oh, it was awful.
11:22Yeah.
11:22Because we had to get, you know, we had to get from upstairs, downstairs and into that shelter.
11:30Yeah.
11:30And the shelter wasn't that big, you know?
11:34It was in the backyard and you had to get into there in case any bombs dropped.
11:40Yes.
11:40But we were lucky.
11:42We got through it and we enjoyed it, you know, at the end when everybody was laughing and
11:49carrying on.
11:50Yeah, yeah.
11:51When everybody was enjoying themselves.
11:53My mum was living in Church Street, down from Queen Mouth.
11:59And I was born at Sundle, Red House.
12:03Plearns Farm.
12:03Plearns Farm.
12:05Is that right, Dad?
12:05Yeah, Plearns Farm.
12:07I was born in 19...
12:1235.
12:1235.
12:14So, if you are old, you know how old I am.
12:18Yeah.
12:18Yeah.
12:20You were talking about the air raids.
12:23Yeah.
12:24Can you remember them?
12:27People don't really know now that these days.
12:30Yeah.
12:30We had a little shelter in the backyard where I had to cram into there and it was awful.
12:38I hated it.
12:39Was it the noise or...?
12:42If I heard a siren, I was a nervous wreck.
12:46Yeah.
12:46Well, I'm not kidding.
12:47I'm not telling lies.
12:49I was.
12:49Oh no, they frightened everybody then.
12:50I was frightened, that.
12:52Yeah.
12:53Really frightening.
12:54Oh, the bomb was just horrible.
12:57It used to frighten me.
12:59I was glad we were in the air raid shelter, to tell you the truth.
13:03And it wasn't that big, being in the air raid shelter, because when your family gets in,
13:09you know, there's a lot of us.
13:11Can you remember how you passed the time when you were in the air raid shelters?
13:16Singing.
13:17Singing?
13:18Singing.
13:20I used to sing.
13:22Right.
13:22My mum and dad and my brothers, they used to come in with us and we all used to sing.
13:33Can you remember the songs?
13:35Oh, old-fashioned songs.
13:38Those were the days, wasn't it?
13:41Yeah, it was.
13:42There was a popular London song, The Lambeth Walk.
13:46The Lambeth Walk, yeah.
13:49When you walk down Lambeth Way, any evening, any day, you see them all doing the Lambeth Walk.
14:04Very good.
14:05Very good.
14:06Can you tell me a bit about the end of the war and what it was like?
14:11Lovely.
14:13Yeah.
14:13Oh, it was lovely.
14:15You know, you can't, the feelings you get, it's beautiful.
14:22My mum was over the moon that that hadn't took any of us.
14:28You know, she was.
14:29My mum was.
14:30She was over the moon that that hadn't took any of us.
14:34And my dad was still alive.
14:36Yeah.
14:36It was lovely.
14:37How did you, how did you, your good lady and yourself meet?
14:41Oh, we first met at Potley Bank, that was down the dock area.
14:48I was in a pipe factory and Sylvia was working for a jigsaw company.
14:57And we were just next door to each other, you know.
15:01Oh, right.
15:02And during lunchtime and times like that, we sort of just got together, you know.
15:10We've been together ever since.