Kingdom of Cleveland: Personal Testimonies (1983: Doomsday)

'''Personal testimony of John Parker, who, at the time of Doomsday was a fifteen year old, living in Chester-le-Street with his parents and older sister. Told in 2007'''

I was a kid when Doomsday happened, fast asleep, it was something like 2am when the first nuke went off I was woken up by a massive light, for a fraction of a second I thought it was my sister Claire playing a prank on me and putting my bedroom light on.

But then a second after the flash, my bedroom window blew in, god the wind! it must’ve been hurricane force, or stronger and so, so hot, I hid under my blankets till it died down. Strangely I can’t remember any sound like an explosion, breaking stuff, even our dog howling, but no explosion, no one in my family can either, maybe it was so loud our ears could cope or something.

My window faced north, so when I sat up in bed out of the broken window and tattered curtains I could see the mushroom cloud boiling over Newcastle, I knew instantly what it was, we’d been told all about it at school, they’d even been adverts on the TV.

My dad came charging into my room as I sat transfixed by the cloud getting bigger and bigger on the horizon, he grabbed me and my blankets, he never said anything to me, just grabbed me, we headed downstairs, my mam and sister were behind us. We hid under the stairs,

I would never have thought it possible for all four of us, and the dog, to squeeze into such a small space, but we did. We didn’t see the bomb that hit Sunderland, we damn well felt it though, the ground shook and some of the plaster fell onto my sister, I can still remember her moaning about that, she’d only had her hair done the day before, silly how the little things stay with you isn’t it!

We stayed under the stairs until the morning, must’ve been 10am when my dad decided to check the house out, he found that the kitchen window and the back room had hardly any damage, guess they were facing away from the blasts when they happened, anyway we left our little bomb shelter and stayed in our back room for the next five days, all we could here from outside were people moving about, not much chaos, just people moving through.

I snuck upstairs on the sixth day when mam and dad were asleep and looked out of my sisters bedroom window that overlooked the main road, its an image that’ll stay with me for the rest of my life, people wandering aimlessly about and bodies everywhere, littering the road. It took me a few seconds to realise what they were, at first I thought they were bags of stuff; it was only when I looked down in our front garden that I realised.

There was a guy, I think it was a guy, dead face up, he was so badly burned you could see all his teeth, like he had a death grin, his eyes were open looking at the sky. Luckily my dad found me then before I could see anything else.

We stayed in the house until early October. The food was starting to run out and my dad decided that it might be best if we moved on, mam was upset at leaving the house, it was our home after all but even she saw it was for the best. Dad decided that we should head south as Newcastle was gone, he had family in North Yorkshire, farmers in Osmotherley, so we would be ok if we could get to them, we looked it up on our road map, dad figured it was about 45 miles, he thought it would take us three or four days to get there.

When we headed off we carried only what we needed, food mostly and some water, dad carried his shotgun with his ammo, I was happy as I got his old service revolver, it only had four rounds but it was better than nothing, dad made me keep it in my school lunchbox so I didn’t hurt anyone by accident. My dad had been in the army during World War Two, he’d been a Para, so he had good survival training, stood us in good stead over then next couple of weeks.

We headed off at dawn, it was raining really heavy, and it took us nearly a day to get out of Chester-le-Street. Dad kept us off the main roads; he didn’t want us to meet anyone bad I think. We walked through the first night, wanting to get as far away from Sunderland and Newcastle as possible. Mam was struggling, she was diabetic and her insulin was starting to run out, of course she hadn’t told us, she didn’t want us to worry too much, mam was like that.

By the second day we’d made it as far as Wingate, you could see Durham to the west, burning during the night. Dad thought that Middlesbrough had probably been hit too, it was a big industrial area after all, of course he was wrong, but it was the right assumption to make at the time. He rerouted us to the west of Cleveland, it added another day to our journey, but like I said he wasn’t to know that Middlesbrough had been spared.

Digby, our dog, did us proud, little Cairn terrier he was. He went hunting with dad on the third night, he got more rabbits than dad, I still don’t know to this day if dad was proud of the dog or just pissed that his hunting credentials had been damaged!

We camped on the outskirts of Yarm on the fourth night, if only we had known about Middlesbrough then, would’ve cut our journey shorter and mam, well mam may have lasted longer. She didn’t wake up on the fifth day, dad decided that we should stay with her, he knew what was happening, me and my sister didn’t, we were kids after all. She died about midday on the 7th of October 1983. We buried her in a patch of woodland near a little stream; she would’ve liked the view. Dad carved her name and date of birth…..and death on a nearby tree with his penknife, and then we left, there was no time for grieving back then, it was just survival. When we buried dad next to her in 2001 we gave them proper headstones.

Anyway we reached my uncles farm on the sixth day, just before sunset. It was the first time I ever saw dad cry when he saw his brother and their family, he cried a lot over then next couple of days, I think what had happened hit home.

Dad, me and my sister worked on the farm for many years, in the late 1990’s we began hearing of Cleveland, or the Kingdom of Cleveland as it was by then from people my uncle began trading in Crathorne. I decided that I needed to go see what was happening, I was 31 when I walked to Middlesbrough, found work down at the docks unloading fishing vessels and later I worked my way up to supervisor.

Dad died in 2001, he got cancer, not totally unexpected, the few of us that made it south were pretty well irradiated, we buried him next to mam gave them both proper gravestones. I’ve had bad lungs for a while, pretty sure its lung cancer, docs can’t do anything so I’ve not bothered them. If it gets really bad I’ll take a long walk next winter, up onto the moors….not bother coming back.

The family’ll go on, Claire, my sister got married in 1993 to a local lad, she’s got three kids and none of them have any mutations, she was worried abut that when she got pregnant the first time, but so far, so good.

John died in late 2008; he had lung cancer, just as he thought. He is survived by his sister Claire, two nephews and a niece. Survivors from the Newcastle and Sunderland area are really very rare, only a few hundred survivors are recorded.