This is my story about Teddy Mc Loughlin.

The Ravenscliffe estate was never a high class address but in the war years it was a nice place to live. Not that our family could aspire to anything else, you see my father was killed in a road accident and with 2 young children my mother couldn't go out to work. We lived on what was called a widows pension and it was enough for only the bare necessities, but there was a war on and nobody had too many luxuries anyway no matter how much money you had. All food was rationed and people were encouraged to 'dig for victory' and grow your own. Clothes were carefully unpicked and woollens were pulled out and knitted into something else. Broken toys were mended or put aside to wait for someone who could fix them, the factories were making munitions not childrens toys. Recycling was alive and well in the 1940's Teddy McLoughlin was much older than all us kids but then at 17 he was twice our age and he was our hero. He was the one to stop the chain constantly falling off my ancient 3 wheeler bike and the other stuff that mum couldn't figure out. He was the one who came to our impromptu cricket games and showed us how to hold the bat, how to bowl and taught us the rules. We played in the street because there were literally no cars since there was no petrol for private use only essential services. We played a lot in the woods too, Ravenscliffe woods that is. Hide and seek type games and war games too. Weapons were bows and arrows and long bayonets made from tree branches, Teddy showed us how to make them. These war games were eventually stamped on severely when a kid on another part of the estate was hit by an arrow and nearly lost an eye. There weren't many restrictions on what we could do or where we could go but we were not supposed to cross the stream in the woods. Dark hints about Nazis and unspecified dangers lurked over the other side of that tiny little trickle that we could easily jump across. There was a reservoir over there which was a definite 'no-go' area with dire consequences threatened if we went there. The wall all round it made only served to make it more attractive and after a few tentative approaches we made the place ours. If there were grown ups in there we stayed away but it was a magic place to us kids otherwise. The water was reached down a slippery, sloping concrete ramp and there were fish to be seen. We had Teddy show us how make a fishing net but he made us promise to use it only in the stream, which we did. We made another one for the reservoir. Other groups told us of kids falling in the water down the slippery ramp and others who fell off the green and slimy outlet channel with a 10 foot drop into a pool, but we never considered the danger. But none my immediate group of friends had any accidents there and better still the girls, who wanted to be in on everything else we did, couldn't climb the wall. Summertime was wonderful but the winters were a trial for me. I was regularly sick in the cold weather and snow and ice seemed to make things even worse. Like all kids we loved the snow and the sledges came out from their summer storage at the first sign of snow. There were 2 favourite sledging places, the best being on the 'golf links' which was way beyond the reservoir and very steep and even more out of bounds. The other was the road just outside our house and this is where I used to go. I was only rarely given permission to go sledging so I used to sneak out very early in the morning before mum was awake. My younger sister would often hear me sneaking downstairs and start clamouring for something to eat so I learned very early on how to make porridge and a bread and butter pudding concoction to keep her quiet. I'd make sure she had her favourite dolls handy and off I'd go for a while. One particular day I had gone downstairs very early because the snow had been perfect the day before and it had been freezing during the night. Looking through the window I saw some people already out enjoying the hard icy surface. Then I saw Teddy running down the road with a clothes line over his shoulder and this struck me as being strange. He normally went to work much later and in the other direction. I must have spent some time getting my sister settled because the next thing I remember is a very insistent bell ringing. This was an the ambulance 'siren' back then and it was making it's way slowly down the road scattering kids everywhere. It also brought mum downstairs to see what was happening and it wasn't long before there grown-ups all over the place. It appears that a group of kids from another part of the estate had decided to go 'skating' on the newly frozen surface of the reservoir. Just a quick dash on to the ice and slide away in ordinary shoes, we knew nothing of ice skates. But the ice wasn't strong enough and it gave way and in a blink of an eye there were kids in freezing cold water, trapped under the ice. No one could swim and in heavy winter clothes they didn't stand much of a chance anyway. Teddy Mc Loughlin couldn't swim either but he went in anyway and got one kid out. But he went back in that freezing cold water once too often and he drowned alongside children he tried to save. He was awarded a posthumous bravery medal but to us kids nothing was ever the same again. I know I never went near that reservoir again.

Submitted by Baz, now residing in Queensland, Australia