大象传媒

My father was in the Home Guard (he was in a 鈥淩eserve Occupation鈥�), and the people who wrote Dads Army got it right. One night, in about 1940, he came home after parade in the blackout and fell into a trench that the gas board had dug. The first bit to hit the other side of the trench was his face and for a few days we kids had to take his tea up to him in bed. He had certainly been to the Bull Hotel.

British Double Time kept it light late in the evening; I remember trying to sleep with the sun streaming through the windows.

The ID card is self explanatory, except that father was THDO 175-1, mother was 2 and I was 3.

A friend of mine used to boast that he used to take a billycan of beer to his dad who was on Home Guard duty on the edge of the Wash. The policeman always said hello but what he never knew was that there was a block of butter wedged under the beer. It was a food producing area, everybody had chickens and many a pig. There was quite a lot of black market. I remember that we had a big box of 鈥淨uality Street鈥�, just the purple ones with a hazel nut in, which we had for treats.

We had a P.O.W camp three miles up the road, and P.O.Ws , under the Geneva Convention can work in food production. There were rather a lot of them, many were forced into the German army (Czechs, Latvians, Yugoslavs, etc.,) and a fairly liberal interpretation was put on food production 鈥�..anybody who wanted a gardener had one. If you could get a bit of Perspex they made smashing toys for a cigarette or two. Many couldn鈥檛 go home after the war because of the Iron Curtain, and one became a good friend of mine. A Sudeten Czech (German speaking), his name was Fritz-known as 鈥淔red the German鈥� and he eventually married a local girl and became naturalised. Long after the war he earned a living keeping chickens, and my favourite memory of him is going to his house and being let in by his wife. 鈥淔reds in the bath鈥� she said, and the bathroom was off the kitchen, a common arrangement in farm cottages. 鈥淚鈥檒l make you a cup of tea鈥濃�︹��..鈥漐at you Bob? Bring your tea in here.鈥� I don鈥檛 know anybody else who has drunk tea with someone while they were having a bath , and I don鈥檛 suppose I ever shall.

A last memory is an American GI, celebrating and very drunk. He was big and coloured. My mother was in the haberdashers (yes, we did have one!) and my eldest sister and I were guarding sister number two in the pram. He had fed us gum and was trying to stuff some in baby sisters mouth when mother came out, She chased the poor man the full length of the market place.That would be 1944.

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