大象传媒

My recollections of the war are few and fragmented; this is because the Grownups did not tell me about it.

Memories of 鈥渂efore鈥� are a jumble of colourful London street markets 鈥� Tommy Trinder and Petula Clarke on the radio, and comics like Radio Fun. People weren鈥檛 afraid to approach a policeman, and public parks had attendants dressed uniformly in brown Trilby, brown shirt and boots with a gunmetal badge saying 鈥淧ark Keeper鈥�. Conductors on buses and trams had black waxed pointed moustaches.

In those days soldiers paraded in nice shiny breastplates on nice shiny horses trotting up and down Birdcage Walk from Horse Guards to St. James鈥檚. We also had foot guards in nice red tunics and busbies. There were aeroplanes too. Blenheim bombers, biplanes which majestically droned across the sky. There was the Schneider Round Britain Trophy race. This had me and other infants converting our beds into cockpits as we took off for Dreamland each night. This was adventure. We believed our Navy to be heroic, unsinkable even: think Drake鈥檚 Drum, Trafalgar and Nelson. The planes and soldiers and sailors were fun, but not war.

The Grownups were getting nervous and I sensed something. My father was going on St. John鈥檚 Ambulance courses. Both he and my mother, a former nurse, practised First Aid on the family. I learned how and where I could take a pulse, how and when to apply a tourniquet and how to bandage and splint. I did enjoy that game.

The new king spoke haltingly on the radio, and the fond thoughts which lingered over Edward鈥檚 memory disappeared in a rush of sympathy for George as the nation willed him to complete the next sentence.

Parents were informed that the Government had ordained that children would be evacuated in groups with their teachers as a 鈥淪chool鈥� to safe places. Due to the complexity of the operation, parents would not know where their children would be for a little while. 鈥淧lease tie a luggage label about your child鈥檚 neck and inscribe upon it his name, address and school in capital letters鈥�. Waterloo Station was crowded with tearful mothers and children, and me, going on a holiday or an adventure. Strangely, despite being with my 鈥淪chool鈥� I don鈥檛 recollect any of the teachers or children being from that group when I arrived at my destination!

We were billeted and then dispatched to the village school where confusion became chaos. Initally, we huddled together and made contact. Then a teacher came and asked what we did. We replied 鈥淣othing鈥�. She went away and returned with some steel knitting needles and taught us to 鈥渃ast on鈥�. This we did a few times, unravelling as the small balls of wool were used up. Then we got bored and went and played in the woods. When we got hungry we found our way back to our billets. This pleasant existence only lasted until the village school and the evacuees got their schedules sorted.

When my parents discovered that the Government鈥檚 idea of a safe haven was HQ District, Army Southern Command, they came south to rescur me from the path of the Panzers. They then arranged for me to be placed in Eire. My father was to volunteer for the Air Force 鈥� despite being 36, and my mother returned to nursing.

Little happened to me during my four years in Eire. My mother first took me to a family in Dublin who lost no time in telling her that they 鈥渟o admired Senor Mussolini, he made the trains run on time鈥�. My second and final pad was with a bachelor farmer up a mountain who was kind and ideal. He never said more than was necessary, never required more from me than was needed, and so, after eats and school, I ran wild. I became a locust and ate my way across the land.

My father was now in Burma. My mother had become too ill to work. She was lonely and, as the air raids had stopped, she came and brought me home. I was just in time to be bombed out with near miss of a VI rocket.

Being bombed out, I recollect, is returning to a building site with no doors or windows, and clouds and heaps of rubble and dust. The odd thing was, we acquired many sepia photos of very old and solemn bodies dressed in the clothes of yesteryear in exchange for our pictures. We were sent to the Deep Shelter. The entrance was by a concrete spiral staircase which went to below the level of the Tube. By this time London was grey, dark and tired, and very different from the colourful, noisy streets I had left.

The rest of the war was spent either in school, Saturday cinema, or with my nose in books, and, for me, it ended when my father returned a whole two years after VE day.

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