大象传媒

.....Like many other families we were brought home far too soon, Londoners thought it was all over, and in their ignorance brought home many evacuees....Only to be confronted with Doodlebugs, and then those ghastly Rockets... I was shipped out again in a great hurry, This time to a Farm near to Trowbridge...My parents had to pay the huge amount of seven pounds a week..{The average wage at the time...approx 拢10.00.

My new guardians were friendly, god fearing folk...Rationing what rationing? We wanted for nothing...With our own Cattle, Chickens, Country folk soon had a barter system going... We lived very well indeed.. The only paper's delivered, was the Christian Herald, and Farm papers...The radio was turned off after the six o'clock news...And from there on our entertainment, was to answer questions from the Bible...One of my jobs, was to shut up the chicken runs, to keep them safe from the foxes. The Farm was over 200 acres, I vividly remember, running like the wind... Once or twice a week, I went out with the Farmers son shooting rabbits...Most nights we had to churn cream into butter...In fact thinking back, if there was light we worked...I don't think any union would have liked it, for we must have been working a 90 hour week!!..

With the shortage of fuel much of Farming returned to the middle ages!. A Serf from the middle ages, could have joined our team. Haystacks then were very hard work, the hay was cut by hand. Men spent hours making this mess into manageable piles. Heavy low 'Drays', pulled by magnificent powerful Shires, collected the piles, when the stack was about nine feet tall space was left for a man. It was called the Devils Nest. The drays would unload, to the poor devil in his nest. Four men in each 'Dray', and another four on the top spreading the hay. They put me into the 'Devils Nest' I loved it...I was a natural. My other work was milking ten cows.

The funny ending to this tale, the war ended, my parents wanted me home. But my new guardians wouldn't hear of it!!! We will charge you nothing for his keep, was their opening gambit. Then they offered wages. Starting at four pounds per week, and finally 拢7.00 per week The average wage at the time was still only ten pounds, my keep was included... But home I came.

To end my Tale. About six months after the war was over, an ambulance stopped opposite, outside 'Ralph's' home... And two orderly's helped a tall old man into the house... I was so excited, and later in the day, I ran over to their house. 'Ralph's mother, a happy laughing lady, let me in, strangely not saying a word. I rushed through to the lounge. Only to meet this apparition of a man. Hollow eyed, he stared right through me鈥o recognition鈥 just couldn't stop staring鈥is hands were gnarled skin and bone. I was told later that he weighed barely four stone. Ralph had been a prisoner at the infamous. Outram Death Camp in Singapore since 1942. Much of this time being tortured, held in small metal cages in chains. The warders taking great pleasure in making the prisoners life unbearable. No sleep. He watched his friends, being beheaded, being beaten to death. Prisoners having to dig their own graves, before being murdered. Scurvy and dysentery. Poor Ralph died shortly after this. I've always though that it was so very sad, that his parents had to see him in such a wretched condition, they could have been spared the memory.

So our family had survived the war. My Fathers company had been bombed out in 1941. His job with E.N.S.A was coming to an end. A family decision was made. We moved to Hove, and opened a guest house...But that another story.

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