大象传媒

My grandfather was a child in world war two and he lived in a small town in Lancashire. He didn鈥檛 experience much bombing where he lived because it wasn鈥檛 a target for the Luftwaffe, however some larger cities nearby were frequently besieged, and he says he heard news almost every day of somewhere in the country, a bomb was doing damage. One period he spent a particularly long time describing was the Blackout, and he told me about curfews and how everybody had to have either a black board covering their windows, or a thick black curtain. He also told me that because all lights outside were banned past 7o鈥檆lock, even bicycle reflectors were forbidden! He showed me his old ration book which contained his coupons which let him buy his weekly food. His school seemed to be just like any other, and he didn鈥檛 tell me about any changes that were made for the war. Although he did not tell me about this, I am fairly sure that because of the rural location of his dwelling meant that lots of families took children in when they were evacuated. He said that sometimes bombs would be dropped around where he lived but that was only when planes were coming back round to cross the channel, and were simply disposing of spare bombs which would weigh the plane down. He also told me about him and his younger brother, who would often fight, and what they got up to in their spare time. Because not many people had cars (at least not where he lived, there was only one family on his street who actually owned one), they were able to play on the streets. There was a field that he and his friends would often go to and play cricket together, and one of my grandfather鈥檚 incisors is knocked backwards because one of his friends bowled a particularly bouncy delivery at him! He also played for a football team every week, at his local YMCA, which is how he met most of his best friends, some of whom he still keeps in touch with now and I have met, which is amazing, because it shows that he has hardly moved his whole life. Despite the fact that he was not directly involved in the effort against the Nazis, I still think his story is very interesting and is a very good source to use to find out about how children lived in the war.

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