大象传媒

I was born in 1938 and as a very young child did not understand the serious side of war,it was how things were.
It was exciting to see Dad build a house at the bottom of the garden for us to play in. This of course was an Anderson shelter complete with two chairs, a small table, parrafin lamp, candles, matches and just for my elder sister and me bunk beds with a hessian potato sack for a mattress. Wrapped up in the eiderdowns from the beds and a stick of Barley sugar to suck we were very comfy.
Mother knitted and Dad either read books or the paper, sometimes he would scribble things on bits of paper with a pencil.
In later years Dad said that they never went to the end of the garden until I stood up in my cot and shouted, "Bombs".
We had two red buckets and a stirrup pump outside the front door and one day Dad was in a terrible temper because they were missing.
I seem to remember watching searchlights lighting up the sky from Rodway Hill.
When old enough I went to Page Park Infants school, the Headmistress was Miss Scrivens.
(Does anyone remember the mad dog in the playground?)
The bomb shelters there were ideal for playing Cowboys and Indians over and around, and I got many a smack from Mother for dirtying my dress and scraping my knees.
One thing that stays in my memory is going to Page Park one night. There was a bonfire and lots of people looking up at a dark shape gliding silently overhead. I must have been very young as Mother picked me up to see it.
Was it a Zeppelin? I'll never know.
The first Barrage Balloon I saw on the ground was at Weston -Super-Mare. Mother took us to see it on a day out. For a long time I thought Elephants rolled up their trunks as I couldn't see a trunk hanging down from the Barrage Ballon. Later on we sat in one of the seafront shelters and I read a leaflet about the Red Cross. I learnt to read at an early age and it still is a favourite pastime.
We were not evacuated but sometimes my sister and I would visit our Grandparents in the Forest of Dean for a week.
All this came to an end when my parents separated and Father took my elder sister, myself and baby sister to London.
There we saw the horrors of war up close. Rows of houses demolished and children in our new school with scars, both physical and mental.
I was nearly seven on VE Day and a street party was held in the next street. Dad took us there when he finished work in the evening but a couple of men wouldn't let us join in as we were not Londoners. So we never got to celebrate VE Day. Dad was very upset as he had worked in London for the best part of the war shoring up bomb damaged buildings and doing carpentry repairs at Westminster.
A few months later Dad put my elder sister and myself in a childrens home and he returned to his parents in the Forest of Dean taking our younger sister with him.

War destroys people in so many ways that is not always obvious.

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