大象传媒

Sources: Coming Home

The learning activities for the 'Coming Home' theme are based on the following stories and photographs. You can use the extracts as they appear on this page, or follow the links to read the full stories.

York and Canada: Memories of an Evacuee

I had a rather free life - at weekends and holidays I would play or roam for hours away from the house at will. I was with the Canadian family for five years and it was a wrench to leave in 1945 and return to war-torn Britain (by the last convoy). My parents seemed like strangers when they met me at the station. It must have been terrible for them to have given up so much for so long and to be faced with a teenager with little appropriate comprehension.

A Surrey Boy's War: Evacuation to South Africa

It was January 1946 before we eventually returned to England, sailing on the 'Caernavon Castle', another ship packed with returning servicemen. We arrived at Southampton on a bitterly cold day to a scene of bombed-out buildings and dockyards, which only added to our feelings of homesickness for South Africa. We went by train to Waterloo where our parents met us. I had difficulty recognising them, as the war had aged them beyond their years. I was struck by the grim faces and drab clothes of the people and the general greyness of the buildings, accentuated by the fact that we had left South Africa in midsummer, full of colour and sunshine. How we missed that sunshine!

The Atlantic Divide: Evacuated to America

When people heard I was going back, they said 'Isn't that wonderful! You must be so thrilled!' I pretended to agree, but as time went by I got more and more uneasy. Because I did not feel anything at all, not reluctance at leaving and certainly not pleasure at returning. We spent the last night tied up to a dock in the Mersey. It was dark, I was up on deck by myself, wrapped in guilt and anxiety. There was still a blackout in effect, but the moon was up, and far away at the end of the dock I could see a figure walking towards me. As it came closer, I recognised the unmistakable, unforgettable shape of an English policeman's helmet. And suddenly the ice jam gave way, and I felt I had come home. I cried, not with joy but with relief at the return of feeling.

What Happened when Daddy Came Home

I was six when the war ended. During the war I was brought up effectively in a 'one-parent' family situation and consequently 'over-bonded' with my Mother. When my Father came home, and did what he should do, i.e. carry on with family life as he did in the past, to my six-year-old mind this effectively smashed up a cosy set-up. I became very jealous (this man taking over my 'girlfriend') and my father did not rationalise that this was the mind of a six-year-old child and never really forgave me.

What is a Daddy?

In 1944 when I was only a baby my father was sent to Burma with the RAF. Mum kept a photo of him on the dressing table and as I began to talk I learned to ask God every night to keep Daddy safe. Then I said goodnight to the picture before I went to sleep. A long time later - it must have been about two years - I remember being carried downstairs wearing my little red dressing gown and being placed on the lap of a strange man. I was told it was Daddy. He said, 'You're a nice little girl, aren't you?' I believe I just said, 'Yes,' and went straight back to sleep!

A Holocaust Survivor's Search for the Truth

Equipped with my mother's last known address [in Vienna] and very little knowledge of German, off I went. I found the address and stood outside a large block of flats, which had one central doorway. I felt rather miserable, but I also felt completely alien to my surroundings and after all this journey didn't even enquire further. Strangely enough all I did was take some photographs, and then I went to a very expensive shop and bought a big Russian-looking fur hat. My mother had been a milliner and so that is why I must have done this. Then I rushed back home to London to find my wife and children waiting at the airport to meet me. I did feel better for satisfying my curiosity, but there was a horrible feeling inside of me that would not go away.

I've got a Million Things to Tell You

Ray has many childhood stories to tell; in fact he has remarkable recollection of significant events from his childhood. He remembers a soldier visiting him when he was a very young child. When he was older and learned of his adoption, it became clear to him that that soldier was in fact his Canadian father. At the end of the war, the visits stopped and he remembers being told that the soldier had to go back to Canada because he had a little girl there that needed him.

An Airman's Son - Part 1

I'd often wondered if my mother might have had some information about my father hidden away among the private papers that I knew she kept in her dressing table. One day I was alone in the house and could not resist the opportunity and temptation to satisfy my curiosity. 'Haemorrhage and lacerations of the brain from a gunshot wound. Took his own life whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed.' It took some moments for the words I had just read to penetrate my brain. I read it again. This was father's death certificate. Suicide. It couldn't be. It was. His name was there. His address. His rank. His service number. It was his! This is how he died.

The Sound of a Lancaster Engine

A few months ago, I fell asleep while the film 'Dambusters' came on the television. I woke with my heart fluttering and a strange feeling in my chest I could not explain. I then realised that the sound of the Lancaster engines had revived that old feeling of those dawn returns and the wondering of who was coming back. It was a strange and poignant feeling.

Remember to Never Forget - the Birth of a Monument

The widow had to see the site; was determined to know every detail. Somehow it might assuage the grief. Fifty-six years after the crash, she flew to Cheshire, England. She found it to be just a farmer's field. But spirits haunted the hedgerow, where the holly bushes had been roughly pruned by the plummeting aircraft. No scars remained in the earth now; no hints of the wind and the ice and the screaming impact. No, only memories lingered. And a bit of the aircraft, presented by the farm boy to the grieving widow.

She laid flowers. She wept bitter tears. The local people observed in respect and wonder; that their field could stir such memories; that someone would come "all this way" to weep at the site. They thought it a touching and final good-bye. Three years later, an email enquiry arrived from England, from a local historian seeking information on the plane crash engraved in local lore. Too many deaths had gone unobserved. Too many widows were passing on and taking their memories with them. The next generation needed to be reminded. He was suggesting a memorial to the crash victims. Would she be interested...?

'The Will to Live': Chapter 40 - Even Freedom Has its Troubles

On mobilisation, I had made an allotment of three-quarters of my army pay to my mother to save for me. Then there were nearly four years of back pay from the army, which made up my starting capital. This was enough money to enable me to buy sufficient scaffolding and plant to get the business restarted. The next problem to solve was finding the building workers, as there were none seeking work in this area. The big builders had remained in business throughout the war, and many of their workers had been classified as excused war service. Moreover, as their other workers were demobilised, their previous employers were able to snap them up again. So what was I to do? The answer was to gather half a dozen unskilled young men from my own village, and train them myself as the first contract progressed.

Cassino War Cemetery

With the last, sad notes of the Lament signifying the closing of the ceremonies, in ones, twos, threes, and in small groups we drifted apart to walk solemnly along the long rows of grave markers. Each of us, men and women alike, old and young, walked slowly along, pausing to read the inscriptions thereon, looking for names of those we knew, of buddies we had left behind in that tortured valley below Cassino town. There were widows and there were mothers amongst us who came to honour the memory of their loved one. As I paused to read the name on a stone bearing the Maple Leaf design I looked to the grave on my right and saw a woman, a touch of grey in her hair, kneeling beside the stone. A widow, a sweetheart, a sister? I didn't know which. Her right hand rested on top of the stone where she had placed a shortstemmed rose. Her head was bent in prayer. She knelt there for perhaps five minutes, and then, as she braced herself to stand I saw teardrops kiss the flowers on his grave. Tears welled up in my eyes and I turned away lest someone see. I was sensitive about such things. Why I should have been ashamed to show the sadness that came over me I'll probably never know. Many others shed tears as well.

Return to Normandy (Part 1)

Having landed on Gold Beach on D Day in Normandy in 1944, I have for many years cherished a nostalgic wish that one day I would return and once again see the beach where I and many others landed. Also I wished to see the surrounding countryside, where, after dumping our invasion load of steel mesh tracking for making the runway of the first airstrip, we worked setting up dumps of supplies, running from Arromanches to various map references with loads of ammunition, petrol, rations etc. I should have mentioned earlier, of course, that my Unit was a General Transport Co., of the RASC.

Since I retired, the idea of making this trip has been increasingly in my thoughts, and this year, seeing that I had now reached my 70th year, I thought this must be the year otherwise I might not make it at all... The gravestones stood in neat rows and had the name and age of the soldier, also his Regimental crest carved upon them and to see their names and ages, some as young as 19, together with the familiar names of their Regiments and Units and other gravestones with the inscription 'Known only unto God' brought a great lump into my throat. The feeling was so strong that I could not stay there any longer, so with a murmured 'God Rest their Souls', I left the cemetery.