Huddled in the air-raid shelter with her neighbours, Doris knew her war effort could be more than knitting socks
BY DAWN KNOX
Doris Sinclair gripped her knitting needles tightly as a wave of helplessness washed over her. She did all she could to make people comfortable and to meet their material needs, but it simply wasn’t enough.
Glancing around the underground chamber in which she and others were sheltering, Doris knitted faster until her needles were a blur. Not that the speed at which she produced one sock would make much difference to anyone. But at least she was doing her bit.
When Britain had declared war on Germany in September 1939, Doris had sprung into action. She’d retired from her job as a teacher the previous year, but there was still plenty she could do to help her neighbours.
To everyone’s surprise, after the outbreak of war, nothing much had appeared to change. The dreaded air raids everyone had feared hadn’t materialised, and the press had begun to refer to that time as the Phony War.
Nevertheless, life had changed. Doris, like everyone else, now always carried her gas mask when she went out.
She observed the blackout regulations at night, preventing light leaking out of her house and alerting Luftwaffe pilots there was something worth bombing.
Unlike many people, Doris had never stockpiled food. She was pleased when the government introduced rationing of meat, butter and sugar so everyone could get a share, although she wasn’t keen on queuing in the shops.
Doris had joined the Women’s Voluntary Service. She’d assisted in the ambitious programme of evacuating thousands of city children away from the threat of bombing raids to live in the safety of the countryside.
However, as the Phony War progressed and there were no German aerial attacks, many of those children returned to their city homes and families.
Now, at the beginning of 1941, Doris huddled in the city’s underground bomb shelter, along with many of those children who’d returned from the country, and their mothers.
The Phony War that had lulled people into a false sense of security had ended with shocking abruptness at the start of September the previous year, on what was later called Black Saturday.
That was the day the Germans had mounted an unbelievable aerial offensive against London, targeting the docks with tons of explosives.
Wave after wave of Luftwaffe planes had swarmed across the south c
