大象传媒

War time reminiscences.

I was three when the war started in 1939. Both parents worked for the Admiralty Civil Service and my father was posted round most of the ports during the war. My mother and I usually went with him.

In Pembroke Dock my father was involved with the Sunderland Flying boats and managed to get me a short flight on one 鈥� my first flying experience. They were huge planes and had three levels 鈥� I remember being surprised that they had stairs in them.

When we were in Newcastle upon Tyne, the warehouses were bombed one night and the Butter and fat warehouse caught fire. It burned for weeks and the molten fat ran flaming down the gutters.

Everything was on ration and difficult to get hold of. Somehow we managed to get hold of 24 eggs, which my mother stored in icinglass in a Victorian wash bowl behind the settee. I was playing cowboys and indians and took a flying leap over the back of the settee and landed both feet in the eggs. I was not popular.

The winter of 1941 was extreme and at the time we were living in a Georgian terrace with about four steps up to the front door from the road. One morning, my father brought me down stairs and opened the front door to show me a wall of snow to the top with the imprint of the front door in it.

We moved to an area called Jesmond Dene. One night there was an air raid and my mother tried to get me and a mattress downstairs to safety. A bomb hit about 6 houses away and threw us down the stairs but luckily the mattress went first and we landed on that.

In the latter days of the war we lived in a small Cotswold village called Kings Stanley where the local woollen mill was converted to a naval stores depot.

Just before D-Day we were woken during the night by heavy engines and rumbling and the next morning we found Americans with tanks parked everywhere. My friend Ron Greenway and I counted 104 tanks parked in every lane and field. They crushed most of the pavements under their weight and ten years after the war one could still see the track marks in the pavements.

I was told not to go up to the American camp, but how could a young boy resist? They used to give us chocolate, Pontifract cakes (liquorish) and gum. We were shown over the tanks and allowed to help them peel potatoes. A few weeks later they disappeared as quickly as they had come.

After D-Day I used to cut out the newspaper pictures of the landings and paste them round the walls of my toy cupboard.

We were in Gillingham, Kent when VE day came and we were given the day off from school. I remember walking back home really excited with several other boys. One said 鈥� we shouldn鈥檛 be celebrating, as the war in Japan is still going on 鈥� its not finished yet鈥� My mother took me up to London for the victory parade and we stood in The Strand where I had a good vantage spot by climbing up a lamp post.

Rationing remained for several years, the last thing to be taken off was I think, Sugar. Sweets were one of the last things and I saved my pocket money for several weeks and the day that sweets were freely available went down to the local shop and spent it all on Smarties and Mars bars. I ate the lot during the morning and was so ill in the afternoon.

Peter John Donovan
16th March 2005

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