大象传媒

My earliest memories of the war are as a five year old child in 1943. I can vividly remember the eerie sound of the wailing siren, and being led to the Anderson shelter in the garden by my parents. The shelter had its own distinctive atmosphere; a mixture of candlewax and the dank smell of earth.I can remember hearing the unsynchronised menacing throb of enemy aircraft, above me but unseen in the total darkness of the night. I don't think I fully appreciated the imminent danger at such a young age, and considered the experience as a bit of an adventure.
I remember my fireman father taking me to see the fire engines at Bond Street Fire Station in Ipswich, all painted in NFS grey (presumably as a kind of camouflage) instead of their original red, and I was allowed to ring the large brass handbells that the engines had in those days.
There were times when my father was away for days; I would overhear his telling my mother of his experiences of the London and Norwich blitzes, where he and his colleagues had been sent to fight fires under a hail of bombs and shrapnel; again, I was too young to really appreciate the mortal danger that he faced, but when I was a little older, I realised that he had indeed fought on the 'home front', and that a number of his colleagues had been killed .
In those war time days, I walked to school in the typical uniform of the period; short grey flannel trousers, long socks ringed at the tops with the school colours, and the school blazer; during daytime air raids, we would be taken to the large communal shelter, and continue lessons there. There was no sense of fear; I think we were all too young for that. I do remember that all our teachers were female; the men had been called up.
I can recollect going shopping with my mother; queues and ration books were commonplace; I can see now the shopkeeper 'marking' the slot on the page of the ration book to indicate that we had had our alloted amount of meat or sugar and so on for that particular week. My mother did wonders with the materials she had, and I always felt that we ate well. Our garden was turned into a miniature allotment, and therefore we always seemed to have fresh vegetables for our main meal; in reality, however, this must have been seasonal.
Another recollection I have is of celebrating Christmas during the war. Behind the cover of blacked out windows, we still had a good time, with games and basically home made presents; my father was a very good carpenter, so he would make me presents, one of which I remember was a model fire engine...of course! It was extremely difficult to buy toys at that time because metal, in particular, was being used for the war effort. When I was six and a half years old, I can remember walking home from an aunt's Christmas party; that would have been December 1944. It was totally pitch black of course; no street lights, and no torches allowed, and it was a case of stumbling home for a distance of two or three miles, perhaps with the help of an occasional glimpse of moonlight, and a familiarity with the route which we had done in daylight quite frequently.
And then came May 1945, when I was seven, and old enough to know the meaning of what was going on. One of my most vivid memories is experiencing for the first time, the wonder of artificial light on a grand scale; there was light everywhere! The streets were suddenly ablaze with light after dark, not just from the street lamps that had been switched on for the first time in six years, but from shops and houses too. It was as if the darkness and fear of the war years were being swept away by an ocean of light welcoming the peace. I certainly remember being taken to the town centre on VE Day, to join in the celebrations; the noise and the boisterous good nature of the crowds, the singing and spontaneous dancing and partying are still clear in my memory, even after 60 years.
My own children are now themselves grown up, and I tell them of my experiences, and the experiences of their grandparents. They know about the war, of course, from lessons at school; but I think it gives them a whole new dimension on that period of our history to hear what we experienced at first hand: that we had to hide in shelters; that we heard enemy aircraft overhead preparing to drop bombs on innocent people below; that our food supplies were strictly rationed; and that as a child I never knew what a working street light looked like until I was seven years old. It is so right to remember this period of history; we have now had 60 years of peace in Western Europe. Our one time enemies are now our friends; may it remain that way for ever.

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