大象传媒

Birth announcements by wireless

Jack Ross

Video recording of Jack Ross interviewed by John Gaisford made on 12/3/2005
Edited transcript by J David 23/9/05

[In 1940] we had our radios, and then they decided they would impound the radios, and they took them all away and put them into storage, but they did return them, for Christmas. So we had radios for Christmas, or wireless sets, rather, And during the period of not having radios 鈥� I did not even have a crystal set 鈥� I listened in on crystal sets, yes, most people did, at one time or another, I didn鈥檛 have one, my son鈥檚 birth was announced. And I did not know whether I had a son or a daughter, someone came in to see me, it was all hush-hush, I wasn鈥檛 told who had picked the message up, but it was a great friend of mine who came up to the office at Le Riche there, 鈥淵ou鈥檝e got a son鈥� I wondered if it he had perhaps met one of the people coming over by submarine, there were frequent visitors like that, I saw some of them, you know, and didn鈥檛 realise that they were really on duty. I didn鈥檛 question them, I minded my own business.
I suppose it was like that, I mean even the Red Cross messages weren鈥檛 coming through yet, so I would have been some time waiting, but they got through. That was some time in November, and he was born on September 9th. So a few weeks had elapsed before they got the news through. I don鈥檛 know how many birth announcements were made, I never had any contact or access to these things, But the great thing, of course, I remember tearing around on my bicycle, to all her friends, the maternity club, because she used to be friends with a number of them, what did she call them, 鈥淭he Pregnancy Club鈥�, or something, all in the Pudding Club, they were all going to evacuate together, but they didn鈥檛, some did, some didn鈥檛, most of them didn鈥檛. I鈥檓 not criticising them, at all. Not at all. They were in better circumstances from a long-time view of feeding, you know, to feed children, and that. There was no problem, food problem generally, the rationing people the central commodities, they were quite good to the children.

Jack Ross

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