大象传媒

In August 1939 we were living in Felixstowe. As we knew war was coming, Dad and a group of men dug an enormous hole in our garden. This was lined with railway sleepers, and then a shed was lowered into it. We had to walk backwards down on a ladder to get into it when the air raid siren sounded. Our neighbour Charlie, who had a wooden leg, would join us. I remember my Dad having to be in charge of putting the wooden leg onto every other rung of the ladder to help Charlie into our shelter! This operation always made me and my sisters laugh, although we were really scared sitting there holding our gas masks. We imagined that as we were living on the coast the Germans would be bound to land on the beach and come to get us. One evening an Air Raid Warden came to our house and said we were showing a crack of light at the bottom of our French doors. He took my Dad into our garden and crouched down to show him. Dad said 鈥淎re they coming over in submarines now?鈥� The Warden didn鈥檛 find it funny, but it went down in history in our family. We had two evacuees delivered to us on September 3rd. They had come from East London. Lenny was eight and Lily was six. They were completely bewildered and both wore labels asking for them to be looked after. It was heartbreaking really. They had lots of fleas in their hair which caused my Mum to be horrified. My sister鈥檚 boyfriend cut their hair very short, in order to deal with their heads. Mum gave them three pence each as a reward and they were really overjoyed. We came to love them and were sorry when their Father came to take them home. This was because we were moving to Ipswich and meant that my two younger sisters became evacuees. They had to go to Leicester, which they found very difficult to deal with. I did war work in a factory, making electric motors to open bomb doors on aeroplanes. I had to work from eight in the morning, till eight at night. One of the girls, whose name I cannot remember, used to faint every time the Air Raid Siren sounded! It wasn鈥檛 too bad doing war work, but somewhat different to being a ledger clerk.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.