大象传媒

This has been submitted to the People's War site by Jan Moore for Kent Libraries and Archives and Canterbury City Council Museums on behalf of Joyce Deluce and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was 10 when the war broke out and I lived in Faversham then. It was the Battle of Britain and very bad over Faversham, so we didn't do a lot of schooling. Every time the siren went, we used to run home from school and we had to wear an 'H' sign round our neck, to say that we were to be sent home. After the Battle of Britain, we had half day schooling, in the air raid shelters. We were a very patriotic school, we always had to sing There'll always be an England!

In 1940 we carried on hop picking during the Battle of Britain, when a German airplane came down. We all chased him, including the men cutting the bines down, but I can't remember what happened to him then.

In October 1940 our house was completely destroyed in a bomb attack. Luckily none of us were seriously hurt.
We had to split up as a family for a while and live in other houses with relatives, until we had the tenancy of a pub for a few months. My mother didn't like it there, so we went back to our relations until we managed to rent a house, through the local brewery.

At the time that the bomb came down, a troop train was waiting on the railway bridge; an uncle was on the train and got off to see what had happened. He was court-martialled for doing that.

We all had to go from school to the railway bridge, to watch the trains with the Dunkirk survivors passing by. We were told that it was history in the making and that we had to watch it.

The farmers came round, wanting volunteers for the Voluntary Land Army. I was about twelve then and got two and sixpence a week. We were also able to bring home extras like fruit and I saved up my money and bought a new bicycle.

In those days, I used to belong to St John Ambulance and volunteered as a war victim. We were all made up, bandaged and splinted. An aeroplane was supposed to come and drop sandbag bombs, but they dropped tear gas bombs instead! I and my friends ended up in Canterbury hospital, because we couldn't get to our gas masks in time.

Towards the end of the war, when I was working, I forgot my gas mask. The police stopped me and I had to report to the police station every day for two weeks!

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