大象传媒

Let me introduce myself. I'm Mrs Sylvia Miller, nee George, born in 1942 in Greenford, Middlesex, the youngest of three girls; a war baby. Our family consisted of Mum, Dad, eldest sister June, and Gloria - a fourth sister, Linda, had not survived infancy.

Recollections of life during WWII are obviously limited by virtue of my tender years. However, my earliest memory was being plucked from my cot whenever the air-raid siren sounded, wrapped in a blanket and taken down into the family's Anderson shelter in our back garden. How I came to loathe this dark, damp, foul-smelling shelter, forever flooded and possibly the cause of my irrational childhood fear of the dark. With the unmitigated cruelty of warring siblings, the Anderson became a place of enforced imprisonment post war, a punishment for upsetting either of my older sisters, but only when Mum or Dad weren't around to protect me!

Whatever age, who could possibly forget those gasmasks? Although dreaded at the time, they became useful items in childhood play. Despite this, the masks also left their mark, that suffocating smell of rubber which you later identified with visits to the school dentist.

My father, exempt from fighting in the military, was employed doing important work in rescue, bomb damage and reclamation, mainly in London, including in what later became infamously known as Doodlebug Alley.
As a family we were lucky enough never to go without during and immediately after those war years, but only because Dad knew his way around the "black market". Certain reclamation spoils also came in handy for raising the odd bob or two - or so I was later informed ...

My most treasured possession at that time was a china miniature part tea service given to Dad by a grateful woman he'd helped rescue during an air raid. Post war, Dad was nicknamed Freddy George, Lord Mayor of Greenford, and Mum, Golden Lil.

With Greenford being so close to Northolt Airport, I became aware at an early age of the droning of fighter planes and other military aircraft flying overhead. Now living in Basingstoke in Hampshire, in the vicinity of both Odiham and Middle Wallop, and the former Greenham Common air bases, this same noise can still sometimes wake me from my slumbers 62 years later.

The American base at Uxbridge, also close to Greenford, meant just two things after the war: chewing gum and chocolate, and yes, as kids, we really did used to chant "got any gum chum" whenever the Yanks were in town!

June 2004

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