'I remember going into the Anderson shelter as the planes flew overhead'
“I REMEMBER the air raid sirens sounding off and going into the shelter at the bottom of the garden as the planes flew overhead.”
Muir resident Ernest Maleham, pictured here with wife Jenny, was just five-years-old when the Second World War began.
Living in Featherstone, south of Leeds, he would often find himself spending the night in the family’s Anderson shelter - half buried in the ground with earth piled on the top to protect them from bomb blasts.
Made from corrugated iron sheets and similar to that pictured here, they were bolted together with steel plates at either end, and were just six-and-a-half by four-and-a-half feet wide.
“I would often experience air raids which were targeting the railways and the sidings for the trucks serving the coal mines,” Ernest said.
“Everything was well camouflaged so there wasn’t a great deal of damage to them.
“If the bombs didn’t hit you then you didn’t worry about it. I grew up in that so I didn’t really think about it.
“People in the cities, such as Leeds 12 miles away, had a different time of it of course.”
In 1944, Ernest moved north of the Yorkshire city to Yeadon where his father worked as an engineer in an underground factory for AV Roe, building Lancaster Bombers which would fly on Britain’s own bombing raids to targets in Germany.
“It was a major underground factory,” said Ernest, a former Muir Group Housing Association scrutiny panel member who now lives in Huntingdon near Cambridge.
“There was a farm built on top to fool the German reconnaissance.
“He used to work 12 hour nights regularly.
“I visited the factory at the end of the war. We lived in a totally different environment from today.”
Aged 10 when the war finished, Ernest went on to do his national service ten years later, working as a cost clerk while attached to the Royal Engineers in Belfast.
He believes Remembrance events are key to keeping alive the lessons of the past.
“If it wasn’t for those who went to war we wouldn’t have the freedoms we enjoy today,” he said.
“Fortunately I think the popularity of Remembrance Day has grown again in recent years.
“There was a time when people maybe felt ashamed – but now they are proud.
“It is important that younger people get a feeling for what happened, even things like rationing.
“You could only get so much meat or dairy products. It was the same for everyone and a very fair system.
“Some of my friends went to serve in Malaya and of course there hasn’t really been much time that has gone by without Britain being involved in a conflict somewhere in the world.
“It is important to remember the sacrifice made on behalf of future generations,” Ernest added.
