My father John E. T. Heslop worked at Hawthorne Leslie shipyard and during the duration of the Second World War told me he was in a 'reserved occupation'and worked two extra half- shifts and one night shift on top of his normal hours each week; in addition he was an air raid warden and when the siren sounded he would put on his tin hat and go out to patrol the area. R and W Hawthorn Leslie Shipyard at Hebburn on Tyne built ten Destroyers for the Admiralty between 1929 and 1938. The last one was H.M.S. Kelly. This ship earned much respect for the yard under the command of Lord Louis Mountbatten, (uncle of Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen's husband) when she survived a serious torpedoing off the Norwegian coast and arrived back at the yard for repairs, almost awash and with many of her crew dead and still below decks. Dad said that large bonuses were offered to men who would go down into the bowels of the ship after she had been pumped out and bring out the bodies. Dive-bombers during the German invasion of Greece and Crete later sank her. A film called "In Which We Serve", starring Noel Coward was made about this ship and the opening scenes of workmen riveting ships plates to-gether was shot in the Hebburn Yard, using the workmen who had built her. 'Bevan Boys' who worked in the mines, were men judged unfit for active service in the armed forces but men were also drafted to work in shipyards and were billeted on local people. We had three men billeted on us in 1940, one from Yorkshire, one from Durham and one from London. A tight fit in a 1930's semi-detached, two bedroomed house which already had my parents,myself and a baby. Mildred Robson