大象传媒

I was living in Portobello Alley and while we were out playing we could hear the radio announcement that war had been declared. My Dad was a regular soldier based at Shorncliffe Barracks. From there he was sent to war immediately

After Dad left we moved home several times because Mum had to go where the work was i.e. on the land. Our home in Littlebourne was in a tin hut provided by the farmer. If there was a large family to accommodate the farmer would cut through to a second adjoining hut to provide more space. We were provided with straw bales to use as beds and we used to lie there at night watching the mice running up and down the wooden frame of the hut.

The children had to work on the land as well. A shelter was dug out in the field for us to go into when bombers came over. When the Canterbury bombing raid was on, we stayed around the shelter for 3 days without changing our clothes and when it was over my Wellingtons had to be cut off me because my feet were so swollen.

One day when we were hop picking German planes came over and machine gunned us as we lay flattened on the ground, they missed us by inches. During this period my mother received a telegram to say Dad was 鈥淢issing presumed dead鈥� and she fainted.

We returned to Deal shortly after this and saw that all the telegraph poles had been removed and stuck in the beach at an angle to make them look like guns pointing towards France. This was because of the threat by the Germans to invade England.

When we returned to live in Deal a bomb dropped nearby wiping out the houses in Robert Street. In another air raid we were coming out of school and children ran trying to get home 鈥� several were injured or killed. This was in the street next to the Landmark Centre where I am sitting relating this story.

The situation got so bad the children in Deal were evacuated. My brother and I went to South Wales, my mother insisted on keeping the three youngest children at home. The authorities said she must send some of the children away so that there would be some of the family left alive for my father to come back to if she and the younger children were killed. By this time my mother had found out that Dad was a prisoner of war in Germany.

Roy and I were in South Wales for a couple of years. It was a very happy experience. The family were lovely. The lady made all my clothes and I came home with a tea chest full of clothes for every season but Mum was so poor that she had to sell them, I never got over this. After Dad came home he gave me a pound to buy another coat. Mum had four more children after this.

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