大象传媒

I was seven when the War broke out, but I do remember that my two uncles joined the army went what we called "Up North". My father didn't go up North - for some reason - perhaps age, as he was born in 1898. Instead he worked at a prisoner-of-war camp for Italians in Pretoria, and he used to bring home beautiful handicrafts they made.

My mother was a volunteer at a hospital for wounded soldiers outside Pietermaritzburg and used to take them meringues and strawberries and cream. I once visited there with her, but the smell of chloroform made me faint, so I never went back. Wounded soldiers used to visit us at home (while my father was away) and used to play rough and tumble with us - I wonder what people would say to that these days, although it was totally innocent as far as I was concerned.

At that point there were five of us: my sister and brother, and the two evacuee children, Pamela and Barbara Smith. Barbara was six and had 'nits' when she arrived. She was very thin and pale, and my mother had to shave off all her hair. Pamela was eleven or twelve and, my mother thought, very bossy. She got sent off to the boarding school in Pietermaritzburg - about 20 miles away from where we lived. I seem to remember she had quite a good time at school but she never really settled when she returned to Lincoln after the war (her parents by that time had had two more children, of which the last was boy whom they named after my brother, Timothy). Barbara apparently didn't settle either, although we didn't keep in touch. She went to Canada, where she got married and died quite young.

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