大象传媒

Roy was 16 when war broke out. He couldn't believe his luck as it meant he could leave school (which he hated) and join the Home Guard. He told me that if you joined you would be paid 1 shilling and that he was "after the shilling". They used to train on the Plymouth College sports ground. He remembers people used to come and watch them training on a Sunday morning. When he was 18 he joined the RAF and was sent to Weston Super Mare for initial training. He found that very easy after his time in the Home Guard but still recalls how difficult some people found it to march, swinging their arms all over th place! He was stationed at Exeter airport for a time trying to trace V1 rockets as they came over and remembers how difficult it was, how they very often couldn't see them in the fog. Later he was sent out to India and remembers all the children as the planes landed in Bombay, all wanting to be in the photographs of the troops arriving. He went on to Assam and then to Rangoon, finally returning to Plymouth at the end of the war on demob.
During the progress of the war his family had moved twice. The first time, they came back from work to find the ceilings of the house all gone. They moved into a neighbour's house. Then, while he was overseas, his parents moved again to an address he had never been to. It was a house they shared with another family - Barbara's. Rooy recallls coming home on demob and telling his father that: "She's all right!"
Barbara was 12 an living in Plymouth when the war started. Her father was in the Navy and on HMS Exeter at the Battle of the Plate. When the ship went down he was saved and returned home for a while. The Captain from the Exeter was given a mew command - the Bonaventure - and asked for all the crew who had been saved from the Exeter to join him. Sadly that ship too went down and this time Barbara's father lost his life. She was 13. Her mother managed to bring up both Barbara and her brother and get them both through school on her widow's pension. There were two schools but one got bombed so they had to share the other building - one school went in the mornings and the other in the afternoons. Barbara recalls hoping that the sirens went off before 6pm so that they didn't have to do their homework. Eventually the school was evacuated to Truro. Barbara remembers living in the cillage there, with two American camps close by. One night they simply vanished - they had all gone to D-Day. They were among the first wave of soldiers to land in Normandy and most of them lost their lives.
She and her mother returned to Plymouth at the end of the war and were living in the house when Roy's parents moved in. When Roy came home on de-mob she remembers her mother telling her nott to get "too far in". If you want out it'll be difficult." She didn't get out and they are still happily married!

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