大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Poeple's War site by Maggie Smith from WM CSV Action Desk on behalf of Paul Spencer-Longhurst and has been added to the site with his permission. Paul Spencer-Longhurst fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My father and mother spent the war years at the market town of Banbury in Oxfordshire. My father (Stanley W. Longhurst) had a Reserved Occupation as an agricultural engineer and implement-supplier but he was also a member of the Home Guard, with numerous reminiscences about night patrols on Crouch Hill and the rural areas that then extended into virtually the town centre. No German invasion occured but my mother (Ruth Spencer Longhurst) spent many nights on incendiary watch, often with ill-matched companions, such as a 12 year old boy. She also spent many nights on duty as a nurse with the St John Ambulance Brigade, sometimes having to find obscure country cottages in the blackout - it was not easy but very rewarding and an essential duty.

Only one bomb fell on Banbury - my mother recalled how she was writing a letter when it went off and how the ink splattered over the page in her shock. It was aimed at the newly built and highly camouflaged Northern Aluminium Company factory on the outskirts of the town. It missed, but damaged the canal, which was then still a much frequented channel for coal and freight.

My parents had an evacuee who came from Peckham Rye in London. Her name was Ivy and my mother was allowed to choose from the group who arrived at the station because of her ambulance responsibilities. She chose this twelve year old who must have found my parent's home a world away from her own background. They had no children then and she became something of a daughter in the end - I met and her and her husband, who visited us many years later in the 1960s. At the beginning however, the clash of cultures was difficult. Ivy was not used to eating with a knife and fork, did not know what a bath was and had a habit of slamming the front door before visitors or callers had moved away. Soon, however, she asscimilated and did not want to leave when the time came. Her own mother visited once and seemed struck dumb. She said hardly a word to her daughter or my parents all day.

My father died in 1965 and my mother in 1994, so I (Paul Spencer-Longhurst) write this on their behalf.

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