"Air-Raid Warning Yellow!" by Peggy McClain Frailey "Air-raid warning yellow!" Those words meant that an air-raid drill was under way, as part of America's home-front defense plan during World War II. I was about 9 years old when my hometown of Mount Union, Pa., conducted its first "blackout," or nighttime drill, in the spring of 1942. The federal government had determined that the Eastern Seaboard, including Pennsylvania, was vulnerable to enemy attack and needed to be on the alert. These blackouts were both exciting and scary for us kids. My 12-year-old sister, Nancy, and I would pull down all the blinds in the house, close the curtains as tightly as we could, and turn off all the lights. Outside, streetlights were extinguished and storefronts darkened. All traffic was stopped. My dad was an air-raid warden, so at the first signal, he would grab his helmet and armband and rush out of the house to his post. My sister, my mother and I would sit in the dark in the living room and wait out the drill, which could run anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour. It seemed like an eternity. My imagination worked overtime during those darkened minutes. I crawled under a coffee table, hoping it would protect me from any bombs the Nazis might drop on our house. We knew it was only a practice drill, but it seemed very real to us. And our imaginations raised all kinds of questions: "What if this is the real thing? Is our dad all right out there in the dark, maybe facing German soldiers?" We strained our ears, listening for the drone of airplanes like those we saw and heard on the Movietone News at the movie theater--or, God forbid, for the blast of bombs being dropped. My two brothers were in the Army, and the younger one was overseas, so I can only guess at the fears these drills must have caused my mother. It was always a relief when the all-clear signal came through. We could turn on the lights, open the curtains and blinds, go out on the front porch and watch the streetlights come on again. Mount Union was a small brickworks town in south central Pennsylvania, located along the Juniata River in Huntingdon County, off Route 22. The town was strategic to the state's defense production. Brickworks at both ends of town turned out bricks for the kilns of the big steel plants that engaged in defense production. The Pennsylvania Railroad's main line ran through town before crossing the Juniata to the east, between Mount Union and Kistler, and an automobile bridge spanned the river between Route 22 and the north end of town. A small airport lay on the outskirts. There were several documented "sightings" of spies and saboteurs in our area. A woman who worked in the library was interviewed by the FBI after reporting that a stranger had come into the library and looked at maps and photos of bridges. When photographs of a group of captured German saboteurs appeared in the newspaper, a local schoolboy recognized one as a man he had seen leaning against a house sketching something while he studied the nearby railroad overpass near the middle of town. During the practice drills, the local air-raid wardens stood guard at the bridges and airport, and at all the local intersections and entrances into town. These wardens became "certified" after special training, and they had the authority to enforce all the blackout regulations. My dad, Fred McClain, was appointed chief air-raid warden for Huntingdon County in the fall of 1942, and Civil Defense became a focal point in our home life. We kids were very patriotic and took a lot of pride in helping the war effort. My father appointed my friend Sally and me as junior air-raid wardens, daylight duty only, meaning that during daytime drills, we could be sent out as messengers. We had armbands and certificates and felt very important, although we never did see action. Our telephone was part of the county's "land telephone communications system." As such, we were a dispatch center for the air-raid signals coming in from the state or county civil defense centers. We never left the phone unattended. Whoever in the house happened to take the first warning call was instructed to get my mother to the phone immediately. She relayed the call to key people in the surrounding communities. There were four color-coded signals that could come over the phone: the preliminary "yellow" air-raid message, which was the first call to come into our home; the "blue-light" caution, which came 15 minutes later; the "red" message of warning, which meant that an enemy attack was under way; and finally, the "white" all-clear signal. The signals were sounded as 5-second blasts with 3-second intervals over a period of 2 minutes. Sirens or whistles were set up in communities throughout the county, but some rural areas were out of reach of the blasts, and this was a troublesome problem for the civil defense council. Most of the air-raid exercises were planned, although some were unexpected. Sometimes the state civil defense council determined when they would be conducted, and sometimes the county council initiated a drill. At first, the dates and times were advertised extensively in the local newspapers. Follow-up accounts about the drill's successes and problems appeared over the next few days, after the civil defense committee had met to review the situation. An ongoing problem was the inability to hide the lights of the kilns at the brickworks. Also, some businesses refused to cooperate with the "lights out" order and were fined. And there was an occasional problem with lighted passenger trains crossing the bridge over the Juniata, thus exposing the bridge. Though the drills were taken seriously, they did have their comic moments--especially drills that caught us by surprise. One summer day in 1943, my aunt, uncle and two cousins were visiting us from Philadelphia. My uncle liked to tease, and my aunt often became impatient with his antics. Their last name was White, and as such, it was a good target for jokes about the air-raid "white" signal. On this particular day, my aunt happened to answer the phone when the preliminary warning for an air-raid drill came through. My uncle had walked downtown and my mother was upstairs, away from the phone. "Air-raid warning yellow," came over the phone line. "All right, Jack, I know it's you," my aunt replied. "I repeat, air-raid warning yellow," the voice said. "Cut it out, Jack. I know it's you. What do you want?" My aunt was in no mood for jokes. "Ma'am, this is air-raid warning yellow!" The voice was insistent. "I'm going to hang up this phone," my aunt announced. Fortunately, Mother got to the phone just in time, having heard my aunt's side of the conversation. My dad had some explaining to do at the next civil defense meeting, but he straightened things out and our house continued to be a telephone dispatch center until the war ended. Few of those air-raid wardens, like my father, are still with us. My friends have memories of their fathers serving in various volunteer civil defense jobs. Besides the air-raid wardens, there were civilian plane spotters, who were trained to look for and identify aircraft flying in the vicinity. Some of my friends were messengers during the drills. It was a time of intense patriotism, not only for adults, but for us kids, too. Now I know how fortunate we were that the air-raid drills were only practice and that we never had to endure real bombings, like so many of our generation did in other countries.