大象传媒

I remember the May Blitz in 1940 - I was a child at the time and didn't really understand what was happening or how serious it was.

My friends and I used to collect shrapnel. We would walk through the houses that had been bombed, we thought of it as a playground and that it was a big adventure.

I lived in a house at the top of a hill. Once a landmine fell on the houses at the bottom and it demolished up to half way up the hill. Luckily it deflected before it reached our house.

We loved the air raid shelter but my mother didn't let us go unless we really had to. We didn't always go immediately the alert sounded.

Before the war my mother hadn't been allowed to work as my father was a Police Inspector. She went out to work at Crawfords Biscuit Factory and learnt all sorts of skills. After the way my father left the Police Force, we moved to Yorkshire and my mother didn't work again.

At school all the male teachers went to war - we only had a few female teachers and classes of about 45 pupils. Despite this we had a good education - classes were boys only or girls only.

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