大象传媒

I was born just outside Birmingham in 1940 and was an only child. My father was in the RAF. I don't remember a great deal about the war but I do remember living in different places because my mother rather fancifully decided we wouldn't stay where we were and took me to various relatives in Shropshire and Somerset. Where houses had been bombed, you could see the wallpaper and fireplaces on the whole wall that was attached to the next unbombed house. This sounds quite frivolous really, but I remember thinking that they looked like dolls' houses that had been opened. I remember a game I played with a little boy down the road when we were back in Birmingham in about 1944 or '45. One of us would stand on my granny's table and the other one would hide underneath it, and the on on top would drop down bricks, pretending they were bombs! It seemed a nice game to play at the time! Then there was the air-raid shelter, which was exactly like the one here at Hampton Court Flower Show in the 大象传媒's war garden, and was good to slide down

One of my friends has a very clear memory of something that happened when he was very small. His family stayed in Birmingham and he was being pushed in his pram down the main road when a German strafed along the road, and he remembers waving to the pilot as he could see him. He could only have been about 2 or so, and I find that quite incredible.

I remember VE Day very clearly. We were back in Birmingham by then and it was great, with a piano in the street, a bonfire, baked potatoes, songs like 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain'. I was a bit miffed because I hadn't got a red, white and blue flag dress. One of my friends had because she was a bit older and the dress had belonged to her older sister who had worn it in 1936 for the coronation. I was wearing a little dress with red and blue flowers on a white background but it wasn't a proper flag dress! But the party was great and the atmosphere felt so good with the feeling that all the grown-ups were so happy. VE Day was wonderful and the street party was probably the most exciting thing that had happened to me in my life up until then.

That was much better than my first banana which was a disappointment, as was my first ice-cream. We didn't have either during the war but we did have oranges occasionally. Everybody goes on about how much they hated dried egg but I absolutely loved it! To me, real egg wasn't at all the same thing, and even when we were in Shropshire, I hated the white of egg. I loved reconstituted dried egg!

My father returned home when I was 6 and I whispered to my mother, 'I don't recognise him!' Poor man! I cried over his diaries quite recently which I found from when he was in Italy and he was drinking toasts to me on my birthday. He left home when I was younger than 1, and as far as I was concerned that was the first time I saw him - when I was 6. Reading about how much he thought of me though, and put me in his tiny little Airforce diary that he wrote in every day, really made me weep a few years ago when I found it. Both happy and sad memories!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.