大象传媒

On my return home I saw how life had changed everyone seemed to be busy. My brother Arthur had been called up for the Army ie The Beds and Herts Regiment,my Mother worked in the Enfield Small arms factory. My father was employed building Air Raid shelters and my sisster was working in a food shop. I started back at my old school St Edmunds,where in playtimes the children used to compare Bomb and shell fragments they had found after air raids Every day life seemed exciting to a child. At night people would would cover their windows with black screens to hide the lights so that they would not be targeted by enemy aircraft. When the air raid started we would go underneath the stairs for protection,It was widely believed that it was safe there, because houses that had been bombed always seemed to have the stairs intact.
If I had to give a reason of how people endured so much yet retained their morale It would be that they never doubted that Britain would win the war,and to feel any different would be betraying our troops in the fighting.
Letters from my Brothers where few and far between, Arthur was in Burma, Whilst Harry was with the eighth army in the desert. their letters home were censored and when received would have several lines blanked out, but that did not bother my parents as long as they heard from them. The air raid warden in our cul-de-sac would walk round the houses inspecting the Blackout blinds, and if he saw a chink of light he would knock and tell the offender to fix it. When the Siren sounded an enemy attack he used to run inside his Anderson shelter poke his head out and blow his whistle, which I found
highly amusing,the sign over his shelter read the!Do Drop In!.In our Cul-De-Sac we had a very close community, and in nineteen forty one when the news was announced that the ship HMS HOOD had been sunk with all hands neighbors poured out of their house and congregated in the road some were crying, one of the young men we all knew was on that ship, his death was confirmed by Telegram in the following days.

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