大象传媒

I was born shortly before D Day so I don't actually remember the war but my mother told me a great deal about what our family experienced during the it. My mother and father's letters, written while they were engaged before the war, showed that they were aware of unsettled times ahead. My dad dressed tobacconist's windows, lodging with a colleague in Clacton, while my mum was in service as a cook and a ladies maid for a couple in Colchester. She did not live in but cycled home each night to be with her widdowed mother, brother and sister.

At the start of the war a mother and a young girl who was about two years old and small enough to be able to sit in a whicker linen basket were evacuated from London to stay in the house where mum worked but they soon returned home.

My mother's sister had only just turned sixteen when the war started. She went into the Womens Land Army but was homesick so she returned home and went to work in a local factory. Her brother was called up into the Army and was posted to work on the big guns in Dover. Early in the war the family did not have a shelter so they got into a cupboard under the stairs when any bombs were near. One fell on the mental hospital just behind them. They heard it whistle as it came down but did not hear the blast which went deep down into the earth although it fell just over the garden fence.

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