'I watched the bombs light up the sky' - one man's memory of Sunderland in the Second World War

Imagine growing up in war-torn Sunderland with bombs falling, anti-aircraft guns and nightly air raid sirens.

Sunderland man Ron Lawson did.

Today, the 91-year-old has looked back on his childhood which was filled with the perils of the Second World War.

Chris Cordner reports.

He was a young boy with his whole life in front of him.

But Britain was at war and the future was far from certain in the years from 1939 to 1945.

Ron Lawson, 91, still has vivid memories of incendiary bombs raining down on Sunderland which was one of the main industrial targets for the German planes.

The wreckage in the bathroom

He remembered the day when his family’s home was hit in 1943.

The former Hylton Road School pupil said: “The biggest danger wasn’t from the bombers. It was from the anti-aircraft guns firing upwards.

“And what goes up has to come down as shrapnel.”

One piece landed on his parents’ house in Oxford Square. It crashed through the roof and landed in the bathroom. Thankfully, no-one was in it at the time.

No point in going to bed

Most of the time, though, families didn’t take the risk of a direct hit.

Ron added: “You used to just go straight into an air raid shelter on a night because as soon as you went to bed, the sirens would go.”

Generally, though, it was all a big adventure for a young lad. There was no fear factor for the children. It was ‘quite a lot of fun,” said Ron.

‘The lads from Oxford Square, and there were a lot of them, would look for the biggest pieces of shrapnel we could find the morning after the air raids.”

Putting out fires

Gunn’s Field, now the area where Pallion Industrial Estate, stands, was a popular spot for debris.

It was a different story for the parents.

His dad had two jobs. He made munitions at Vickers Armstrong but he was also an air raid warden which meant he would be out on the streets.

One night, an incendiary bomb landed in the garden opposite Ron’s family home. It was down to his dad to put it out.

Coping on rations

Mostly, though, the war was all about finding ways of coping amid the hardships.

Everyone had to make sacrifices. Families were on rations but they had their own way of coping.

“My mother would do a deal with tea and things like that. If you didn’t want one of the things on ration you would do a swap.”

But it was the air raids and the night sky of Sunderland which fascinated Ron.

He has vivid recollections of one night when he was stood at the back gate watching the Kings Theatre burning in the distance in Crowtree Road.

‘The flames were shooting up into the sky’.

Dancing in the streets on VE Day

Ron grew up to be a JP, a telephone exchange specialist, a historian with Sunderland Antiquarian Society and was a gateman at Roker Park for 13 years.

But the war years have never faded in his memory.

He even recalls the fun his family had on VE Day - the day the war in Europe came to an end in 1945.

‘Our house was right at the top of Oxford Square and it was a big square. We had a radiogram and my dad dragged it into our front garden.

“Everyone in the street came out and we were all dancing.”

Do you have a relative who shared memories of the war years? Relive them by emailing [email protected]