Duty Calls

My late mother and father, Bronwen and Trevor, often told me stirring tales of their time as Air Raid Wardens in Newbold, living right opposite the Wardens Post on Highfield Avenue. In particular, many stories centred on their Persian cat, Mickey.

Born in the local waggon works as part of a semi-wild litter, Mickey say his war service as escort to the children going to Highfield Hall School, sitting on the front garden wall taking paw-swiped at dogs passing below (including the local RSPCA’s St Bernard “Bader”) and joining the Wardens in their hut when duty called. During the quieter phase of the war he was a common sight snuggling up to, purring (and rattling!) the old biscuit tin, with a lighted candle inside, which contrived to keep the teapot warm. However, during the “Sheffield Blitz” he really came into his own as an on-the-job warden.

Like many cats he had an acute and highly discriminatory sense of hearing that enabled him to distinguish between the cheerful and steady hum of the RAF and the nagging, throbbing drone of enemy bombers. Being able to hear trouble coming long before the alarm bell fixed to my patents bedhead, or the air raid siren, my parents learned to watch for the customary alert washing and purring or else the flattened ears that told all was not well. All this happening, of course, in apparent silence.

As things got worse for Sheffield, Mickey began to see the value of his prescient gifts, as he watched my parents putting out the incendiary bombs which pitted the window glass and torched the bushes, almost nightly. One night, after only a brief moment of ear flattening, he was off outside and nosing his way into the Wardens Post. My trusting parents followed blindly, buttoning up as they went. They arrived just in time to hear the siren sound and to watch the duty warden fill in the log-book with “Mickey Quick was first on duty”!

This story was told to the staff at Chesterfield Library

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