大象传媒

I was stationed at the time at Royal Bedford. I called on the local farmer and purchased a live chicken which we then put into a cardboard box with holes cut out, tied with string and put a handful of seeds in the box. I caught the train to London placing the box with the live chicken in it in a safe place up on the luggage rack where the chicken must have enjoyed their journey by attracting my fellow passengers by clucking all the way to London. When I arrived home to Aldgate East I took it to the Cobb Street Shercat and my mother and I enjoyed the soup with lockshen and knaidels and of course the chicken throughout the seven days of my leave. This was a complete contrast from all the raids and other nasty things happening in a war torn London and over the years caused plenty of amusement. I was called up at 18.5 years, my brother was in the Air Force there was only my mother at home in the East End. So when I went on leave it was only my mother and I. My mother was Polish and my father was Austrian so I was asked to sign a document. I was in the Royal Engineers for five years. The bridges were obviously shipped abroad so we had to assemble them, one at each side.

Although I was serving in the British Army my mother was classified as an alien, she had to report to the police station regularly, she was very much disabled, her backbone was protruding, she was 4ft 6ins in height and she still had to report to the police. I went back often on leave and we received letters from each other. I knew she was all right although she lived in an area with a lot of bombing. In air raids you went down to a big cellar with concrete walls. Buildings were destroyed to some extent but there were landmines, they are a different thing altogether.

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