大象传媒

I was 8 when war was declared. I remember listening to the broadcast and wondering how it would affect us as a family. I lived in Doddington Road, Lincoln. I had two older brothers. Percy, the oldest, was 19 and went an joined up the first day. His theory was that first in would be first out.

In the early months of the war, I was frightened by the army coming with lots of tanks and living in our orchard for a while. I have no idea where they went to or why they came. My younger brother, Stanley, was already in the Navy at HMS Ganges. He had been pestering my father for permission to go to sea. He was under age and I remember all the arguments because Dad thought there would be a war. All of Stanley鈥檚 friends had got permission and in the end Dad gave in and off he sailed. Then war broke out and life certainly altered in our house. Stanley started off on HMS Barham. He used to fascinate me with his stories of Gibralter and Alexandria. After his last battle he eventually had a leave. He was not well and advised by the doctor to have a few days longer. Because of that he was punished and put on to submarines, HMS Porpoise. He went missing 19th January, 1945 off the west coast of Penang. He had married at Barrow-in-Furness when under age, and got our vicar to give him permission because Dad wouldn鈥檛. He had a little boy who he never saw, but knew of him.

My elder brother ended up in North Africa. He made friends with a French family in Algiers and I still correspond with their daughter to this day. I must have been a very impressionable teenager. I decided to pray every day for them both to come home. I started off with Percy and chose a date of 8th December. That was magic. Our house was the bus terminus and at 8.30 pm when the last bus came home I told my mother that Percy was on it. She told me not to be stupid, but he walked in the door. I never explained to her why I said that. I then chose a date for Stanley to come home but it was too late. I used to play the piano a lot, and the last time I saw him he aid he would come home when I learnt to play 鈥楾here will always be an England鈥�. I am quite ashamed to say that I have never seen the music of it so still can鈥檛 play it.

I always remember the very last remembrance day we had on 11th November while I was at Junior School. We were all stood around the war memorial when along came Stanley in his uniform and stood to attention. Now his name is on that memorial at Bracebridge.

I hated my gas mask. It terrified me. I thought the horrible smell of rubber would suffocate me. We did not have too much bombing near us but one night my Dad and Mr Needham were on firewatch duty. While they were patrolling the road they saw a plane dropping what they thought were pretty lights. They soon changed their minds as it was a German plane dropping lots of incendiary bombs. They all fell in a field across from our house and my mother could not wake me up so she stayed in the bedroom with me. I remember another time when Stanley was on leave and visiting his girlfriend in Monks Road when some bombs fell there.

There are one or two incidents I remember like that in Lincoln. One day after I came home from my music lesson Mum was upstairs looking out of the back bedroom window. A Lancaster had gone over in trouble and crashed on a house in Highfield Avenue. The upsetting thing for me was that it was my friends鈥� house and we had just been to our music lesson together. My two friends lost their mother and two brothers. I used to like to count the Lancasters going out and coming home and I like to hear them now whenever they come to a show.

The most frightening tie I had was the night when Skellingthorpe ammunition dump was bombed. The whole sky was lit up and it seemed to go on and on. We did not have a shelter so Dad put us under the kitchen table. I was so frightened, just in my nightie, I鈥檓 afraid to say I wet myself. Dad decided we would be safer under Mr Pennell鈥檚 hedge next door, so that鈥檚 where we spent the night. Years after, my mother told me that the film called Flare Path was based on that night.

As well as working at Robeys, Dad used to be self-sufficient on our land. We grew everything and had two cows for milking and pigs fattened up twice a year. It used to be my job to take pigs fries, etc. to the neighbours.

The happiest part of the war for me was when my cousin who was in the New Zealand Air Force, got posted over here. I shan鈥檛 forget that night when he just came to the dor and mother just said 鈥淗ello Horace鈥� as if it was an everyday thing. How did she know he was coming? and she hadn鈥檛 seen him since he was two. It used to be good when Percy and Horace had leave at the same time. They used to play ticks on me. One night they put an old gramophone under y bed and tied some string to it. They intended to pull the string when coming up the stairs and Bing Crosby would sing Don鈥檛 Fence Me In, but I saw this shadow under my bed and it scared me to death. My mother took the string off and we laid in wait for them. They were pulling for ages until I gave the game away by laughing.

They were hard days but everyone worked together and made the best of everything.

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