大象传媒

I don't remember how the war started but I mind sittin' on the edge of my father's muckle leather chair, my ear against the big wireless speaker and hearing a crackly voice telling me that sugar was to be rationed and there were to be no more sweeties. So that's what a war was! We made blackout blinds and my father an his pals dug a hole and made an Anderson shelter in the garden "for us to play in", they said. When the bombs dropped by Dad was on duty as a special constable and helped the folks get out of the wreckage in Forest Park. We hid under our table that night. My wee brother aged four had a siren suit, a bit like a zip-up sleeping bag. He cried a lot when they tried to put on his red micky-mouse gas mask. I had a real grown up one in its cardboard box to take to school. Then my Dad went away to the navy on Frigates and destroyers. One of the boys in my class whose dad was in the navy was killed. To get some attention I told my teacher that my Dad had been drowned at sea. Then, she met my Mum and and said "So sorry to hear your man was drowned". My Mum had a fit!, and I got walloped. When VE day came I climbed up on the roof of our house to put up flags. I was only 10 and when I look at that roof now I must have been a daredevil!
When my Dad came back from a convoy to Gibraltar he brought us a banana. We had never seen or tasted one and we had a half each. That night I got to sleep in his hammock from the rafters in the attic along with the two hens that we had killed for a special meal. We kept hens in our garden and my lame uncle grew veges there as well. I was given a shilling once a month to take to school for saving certificates for the war effort and I think we were trying to buy a Spitfire. My folks were going to send us to Canada to live on a homestead in Manitoba, but the week before we left a ship with children on it was torpedoed, so they changed their minds. When VJ day came we wern'y very happy as our dad was still on his ship in Singapore and it would be another six months before he was demobbed and came home. The saddest thing about the war was that our Dad was never really close to us after all that. There are no winners in war.

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