大象传媒

I have to go back to 1939, when the war was declared. I remember the excitement running through my whole body. I was a young girl, not a thought of the terror of war and the heartache it would bring to hundreds of families, all I thought of was all the young men in army uniforms, the black outs, getting caught in the pictures when the sirens went off, good excuse for staying out late because when that happened you had to stay in the theatre until the all clear went off (so I didn鈥檛 get a telling off from my mum for being out late).
It was like being in the middle of a story, it didn鈥檛 seem real, sons and fathers going overseas, my dad was in the merchant navy in convoys, but it never sunk in he was in danger, bombs fell, homes were hit, we went to bed at night and didn鈥檛 think anything could happen, but we were young kids and we thought like kids, going out at night with our little torches was exciting.
It was one awful day in 1941, I remember it so well, there was a knock on the door, a man stood there, he asked for my mum, she brought him in, he was from the shipping office. We all stood open mouthed, you see dad was torpedoed the year before he was on an artillery cruiser, he was a boson and he was in the water for hours before he was picked up. He was in a mess when he came home, and before long he was ready to go back even though he was in his 50s, but that was my dad, and this man had come to tell us dad was dead. He was buried in Suez, we were all devastated, my mum had three sons younger than me; Frank, Gordon and Billy, who was only a baby. Edward Davies, our father had gone and we would never see him again.
I think I grew up that day, and realised what a terrible thing war was. My mum had no husband, we kids had no dad, we didn鈥檛 have a body to bury or mourn and I realised that thousands of families were in that same situation as us and I shed a tear for the whole human race. FOR GODS SAKE DON鈥橳 LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN.
Tess Fenton

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