大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of James Sterland with his permission. The Author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My twin brother and I were born in 1938 - one year before the war started. We were born and lived on a small farm in Huthwaite in Nottinghamshire. A brook divided Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire and also our small farm of 16 acres.

One of the few things that I can remember from a young age, probably about 4 years old, was hearing the drones of the planes heading to Sheffield during the night and then returning half an hour later. This went on night after night. I do not remember feeling frightened.

One morning, my brother and I were playing in the fields and we found lengths of silver paper strewn all over the hedges, trees and fields. We had a great time collecting this and waited eagerly for the next day to collect more and store it in the barn.

Years later we found out what that was all about. The silver foil was dropped to confuse the German radar aboard the Bombers into thinking that they were over Sheffield.

No bombs dropped over our farm.

Another memory is on Threshing days, which only happened once a year, around November. A contractor used to come to the farm to thresh the summer's harvest. The contractor had Italian Prisoners of War working for him. One of these Italians made a ring out of a truepenny piece for my sister who was one year older than my brother and me.

My final memory is of taking 'black market' pieces of pork to my Headmaster and the local Bobby. My Dad had the animal movement book modified so that he always had one more pig than he declared!

That was life.

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