I WAS 11 years old when I was told that Hitler was finished and that we had beaten the Germans. I can recall the six years that had passed when we had to suffer blackouts, no street lights and shortages of certain foodstuffs. I remember being told to be easy on the butter I was spreading on my bread. We had a bigger supply of margarine so I said I would have that. I have never eaten butter since. You had to stand in long queues for any commodity. My gran used to send all of us to the wet fish shop at the bottom of the pawnshop stairs on Felling High Street where we would queue for what seemed hours to get into the shop, make our purchase and go out through the back door clutching one hen's egg. Woe betides any of us who did not get the commodity back home in its shell. The 1941 winter was particularly hard. I think we had snow about three feet deep.
One day, I was about six years old at the time, my mother asked me to go to Storeys, the local corner shop. She gave me half a crown (2/6) which equates to twelve and a half pence these days, but back then probably half a week's wages. I remember running in the snow to the shop when suddenly the half crown flew out of my hand. No matter how my mam and I searched we could not find it in the snow. It must have been weeks later when all the snow had melted one of the neighbours turned up at our door and handed the coin to my mother. She had found it about 20 yards further down the street to where I thought I had lost it. Lots of areas of open ground were turned over to agriculture. In the field at the bottom end of Felling they planted potatoes, and I think they used Italian prisoners of war to tend them. One day one of these men came running up the street. The cry went up that he was an escaped prisoner. He passed us as we were playing in the street but a few yards further up a man ran out of his garden gate and tackled him to the ground. He was kept there until the police came and took him away. We all had Anderson shelters in our gardens in case of air raids. When the sirens went we had to scramble out of bed and go to the shelter and try to get back to sleep. I remember one night my eldest brother, Harry, was helping us to the shelter when he pointed out through the landing window 'Look at the Flaming Onions.' He said these were the tracer shells being fired at the German planes. I don't know if this was a local name for them or something he made up.
When the raids became more frequent we did not wait for the sirens to start but went to bed in the Anderson shelter at our normal bedtime. If there had been a particularly long raid during the night next day's school would often be cancelled. I know I turned up at Falla Park Infants at least once to find that school was closed; having spent the night in the air raid shelter we were unaware that there had been a raid. One of the things we used to enjoy after an air raid was looking for shrapnel. After the shells had exploded in the air small fragments would fall to the ground and these were what we were looking for on our way to and from school. One night while in the shelter we heard a terrific thump at the back of the shelter. My mother was convinced we'd been hit by an unexploded bomb. However, next morning, when my eldest brother Harry got up to do his early morning paper round he discovered that what had hit was the empty casing of an incendiary bomb. Like most places in the North East there were mineral railway lines in the area. The nearest to where we lived was the one which ran from Heworth Colliery to Bill Quay Staithes. We often used to play there because next to the winding house was a pond where we could fish for tiddlers.
One Sunday my brothers Harry, George, I think my sister Maureen and myself had been there as usual and were making our way home when this plane, which looked huge to me, flew very low overhead. It was so low we could plainly see the airman at the back. We were waving to him and he waved back to us when a woman from Grange Crescent, just next to the line, grabbed us and said 'get inside can't you see that's a German plane'. We were told that plane was shot down near North Shields. I wrote earlier of food shortages. One thing which disappeared completely during the war was bananas. I remember coming home from school with a few of my mates when a man in the next street asked us if we would like piece of banana. Of course we all said yes. He thought he was a bit of a wag and when I opened my mouth to try it he put a piece of cucumber on my tongue. To this day I cannot stand the smell or taste of cucumber.
There were lots of slogans on posters on the walls, official ones like Dig for Victory, Careless talk costs Lives, Put that Light Out. One famous unofficial one was Mr Chad. He looked like the head of Humpty Dumpty looking over a wall with a slogan asking things like 'Wot no Fags'. One more thing I remember during the early days of the war was the smoke screens which were placed around the main roads of the town. These were about the size of a dustbin with a long chimney on top. I think they were filled with used engine oil and were set alight at dusk by soldiers. We were told these soldiers were conscientious objectors. We used to play around these and, of course, we got covered in filth. My mam would say 'look at the state of you, you look as if you had been working down the pit'. I recall these smoke screens stretching from Split Crow Road through Crowhall Lane and on down Watermill Lane. Some local residents were of the opinion that these smoke screens were an attempt to fool the Germans that this was the route of the River Tyne. Fortunately for us residents this did not happen and we were never bombed.
There were also Ack Ack sites in any convenient spot, and during any air raid the adults would voice their opinions as to where the enemy planes were flying, they reckoned they knew the distinctive sounds of the guns from each site. I could understand the Nook ones (nickname Big Bertha) or the Wrekentons, but I never could fathom out the Langbentons or the Squareuns. We also had the barrage balloons, the one the Lairies was the one already featured in your paper which brought down a British plane, (incidentally it was believed at the time that the pilot was Canadian). There was another balloon site at Jonadab near Heworth Shore. Other wartime measures were the tank obstacles, huge barriers made out of concrete built out from the pavement on to the highway which cut down the width of the road to allow the passage of a tram but not a tank. We had one of these on Sunderland Road outside of the Duke of Conaught pub. I was never sure if this was to prevent tanks from moving into Felling from Gateshead or vice versa. Also scattered around the town were static water tanks in case of bombing by incendiary bombs. One of these was sited in an old factory building next to Adamson Greens engineering factory opposite the Duke of Conaught pub. Unfortunately one evening the factory wall collapsed and thousands of gallons of water flooded the shops and houses opposite. I remember seeing the state of Thubrons shop especially. I recall my mother telling us of the day she saw Spillars being bombed. She had been walking across the Bankie Fields towards Dorothy Street when this German bomber flew over quite low and dropped its bombs on the other side of the river and hit the flour mill.
After peace was declared practically every street became decked out in flags and bunting with huge white cloths saying 'Welcome Home' with the name of the serviceman who was expected, whether he was a returned prisoner of war or a serviceman who had just finished fighting. I remember the bunting outside of my grandmother's house saying 'Welcome Home Mattie'. I remember a priest asking me where he had been held prisoner when I said he hadn't been a prisoner but had fought in the desert he just said 'Humph' and walked down the road. Of course there were bonfires on any available site whether suitable or not and I must not forget the street parties. Trestle tables were commandeered from church halls and such or people used their own dining tables and chairs. Some of the tables appeared to stretch for hundreds of yards to my young eyes, covered in white cloths and laden with more food than I could ever remember seeing. Pianos and wind-up gramophones were brought out into the street and everyone joined in singing all of the wartime favourites such as White Cliffs of Dover, We'll Meet Again, etc. Of course it was not all over then. There were still three months to go with the war in the Far East with Japan, and some of the families still had sons or husbands out there.
The following is the eulogy I was honoured to give at my Dad’s funeral in August 2009. RIP Eddy; I miss you every day mate.
Looking at all those of you, from whatever aspect of my dad’s multi-faceted and richly rewarding life, who’ve come here this morning, not simply to pay your last respects to him, but to celebrate what a fine, fascinating and enduringly supportive man Eddy Cusack was, fills us all with humility and a deep gratitude. Of course Eddy himself (and by referring to him in such a way I hope you don’t feel I’m being disrespectful; I was proud to call him my dad, but, like you all, I knew him as Eddy), wouldn’t have expected you all to have traipsed all the way over here just on his behalf, as the absolute keynote of his entire life, as shown in his dealings with every single one of us here today, was an unassuming humility and an insistence on putting everyone else’s needs and requirements ahead of his own. He was, as a husband, father, grandfather, brother (in all the senses of the word bearing in mind his varied interests and commitments), friend and colleague, utterly selfless to an extent I’ve never seen in another human being.
The music you heard as Eddy’s coffin was brought in, was “The Peers’ Chorus” from “Iolanthe,” which was a piece of music Eddy particularly relished singing and a fine singing voice he had, which my sister Elaine was lucky enough to inherit. Through my dad I developed a deep and abiding love for Irish traditional folk music (indeed, in matching Arran sweaters knitted by my mam’s late sister Maureen, we attended my first live gig at the City Hall in 1968, when we went to see The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, on the second anniversary of whose death my dad passed away).
A few days before my dad died, we shared a final musical moment. I took my ipod in with me when I visited him in the Freeman Hospital and, placing an earphone in his good right lug and the other one in my left ear, I played The Clancy’s song “The Parting Glass,” as he loved the song. If I may I’d like to quote from “The Parting Glass.” Perhaps its most famous lines are contained within the second verse -:
But since it falls unto my lot that I should rise while you should not,
I will gently rise and I'll softly call, "Goodnight and joy be with you all!"
While such sentiments are admirable and sum up a great deal of my dad’s love of life and his delight in the company and affection of his family, his friends and his acquaintances, I feel the final verse of “The Parting Glass” describes perfectly the essential selflessness and humility of the man I was proud to call my father, the man who was devoted to my mother and as much in love with her on the day he left this life as on the day almost 52 years previously when they’d married -:
Oh, if I had leisure time to sit awhile
There is a fair maid in this town that surely has my heart beguiled
Her rosy cheeks and ruby lips, she alone has my heart in thrall.
So fill me to the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.
Goodnight Eddy: I’ll miss you. We’ll all miss you, but we’ll all be forever in your debt for having known you.
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